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Copyright, 1910 
By J. B. MILLET CO. 



THE • PLIMPTON • PRESS 

[W -D -o] 
NORWOOD • MASS = U • S . A 



©CI. A 2 860 91 



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CONTENTS 



AFTER PAGE 

Editorial Note ix 

I Eakly History 3 

II Later History 35 

III The Land System . 68 

IV The Government of India 99 

V Revenues and Taxation 126 

VI Native States 149 

VII Unrest 161 

VIII Unrest (Continued) 189 

IX The Congress 223 

X Social Reform 240 

XI Economic Policy ........ 275 

Index 323 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

Evening in the Avenue of Jaipur .... Frontispiece t^ 

Group of Hindoos, Maratta Caste 32^^ 

La Martiniere 64 ^" 

Bombay from Mazaguon Hill 96'^ 

A Native Indian Village near Calcutta 192 -^ 

Golcondah Tombs with Fort in Distance .... 224 '^ 



vu 



EDITORIAL NOTE 

NO more competent person could be found to 
describe the real India than Colonel J. D. Rees, 
the author of this volume. He has lived for 
over a quarter of a century in that country, has passed 
through nearly all the grades of the Indian Civil Service, 
and he possesses, furthermore, the high qualification of 
being a master of most of the languages and dialects 
spoken by the natives of that vast country, as well as of 
Russian. This has enabled him to get nearer the hearts 
and minds of its teeming millions than most men who 
write on India have done, and his knowledge of Russian 
has enabled him to fathom more completely than most 
the real significance of the attitude of Russia towards 
India and the Far East. 

The first chapter contains a sketch of the past his- 
tory of India, showing the perpetual state of warfare and 
oppression which existed up to the time of the Mogul 
Empire, and how little good government was enjoyed by 
the people during the latter period which is now repre- 
sented by agitators as the Golden Age. 

The consolidation of the British Empire is hardly 
noticed, since that is the most familiar period of Indian 
history, but a glimpse is given of the anarchy and misery 
which followed upon the break-up of the Mogul Empire 
and the predatory predominance of the Mahrattas. 

A brief account is then given of the land system of the 

ix 



EDITORIAL NOTE 

British Government, showing how much more favourable 
to the landowner and cultivator it is than that of its 
predecessors in title, whose system, nevertheless, it closely 
follows. The constitution of the Government of India is 
explained, its financial system, the policy pursued towards 
the native states and on the frontier, the causes and char- 
acter of the present unrest, and the connection therewith 
of the Hindoo Congress, the character of the reforms sug- 
gested by Mr. Morley and Lord Minto, and now under 
the consideration of the local administration and of the 
general public, are all fully set forth. 

A chapter follows on social reform, and incidentally 
some account is given of the domestic life of the Indians, 
a fascinating subject, and a mirror, in many respects, of 
life in the pantheistic and polytheistic times, with which 
those are familiar, who read the classics in school. A 
final chapter deals with the economic conditions of the 
country, and the economic policy of the Government of 
India. 

The work is avowedly and frankly written from the 
British point of view, and this should be borne in mind 
while reading the author's most instructive account of 
the attitude of the English oflficial mind towards the great 
and important questions with which the English Govern- 
ment has to deal in administering the affairs of the enor- 
mous agglomeration of different races, for the peace and 
safety of which it is responsible. 

One of the greatest problems that has ever confronted 
the British Government is that with which it is now called 
upon to deal in India. The spirit of unrest, the desire 
for greater personal liberty, the desire to take part in 
the Government, has arisen in India and will not down. 
The assassin has already begun his work in an attempt 



EDITORIAL NOTE 

to protest against conditions which are resented by many 
of the natives. Only recently in London itseK an Enghsh- 
Indian official was assassinated by a native "student." 
How this "new spirit" has been awakened and fostered 
in India, and the attitude of England toward it, are dealt 
with in this volume among many other matters. This 
is a question of vital interest, for the teeming millions 
of India may one day be threatening the peace of the 
whole world. 

Chahles Welsh. 



XI 



INDIA 
The Real India 



INDIA 

THE REAL INDIA^ 

CHAPTER I 

EARLY HISTORY 

THE poverty of language is responsible for 
describing as a country the vast sub-conti- 
nent which stretches from the eighth to the 
thirty-sixth degree of latitude, from the roof of the 
world beyond the Himalayas to the Southern Ocean, 
which includes 1,766,597 of square miles, and a popu- 
lation of 300,000,000. The provinces under imme- 
diate British administration comprise upwards of 
61, and the native states upwards of 38 per cent, of 
the whole, and of the population 62,461,000 inhabit 
the latter area. Of the British provinces Burma 
is somewhat smaller than Austria-Hungary; Bengal 
and Bombay are both bigger than Sweden, and 
Madras is about the same size as Prussia and Den- 
mark taken together, while, of the native states, 
Hyderabad is rather larger, and Cashmere rather 

^ The author's use of " we," " our," " the Government," etc., when refer- 
ring to the British and the British Government, have not been changed, in 
order that the point of view of the writer may be the more emphasised. 
Nor has the English been changed into American money, since any one 
can readily mentally multiply the English pounds by five to convert them 
into American dollars. 

3 



INDIA 

smaller, than Great Britain. So little do different 
parts of the empire resemble one another that the 
density of the population varies from 11 to 1920 to 
the square mile in different regions in the wide area 
extending from the Persian frontier to the Chinese 
march, and from the passes of eternal snow to the 
burning jungles of Malabar. One male in 10, and 
one woman in 144, is literate, and in educational 
eminence the order of precedence is Burma, Madras, 
Bombay, and Bengal. The native states of Cochin 
and Travancore, however, rank higher in this respect 
than any British province, and therein Christians are 
25 per cent, of the population as against 1 per cent, 
throughout India. Four-fifths of the Christians of 
Madras are found south of that city, and of all our 
co-religionists in the continent two-thirds are found 
in the same Presidency. Agriculture in some form 
is the occupation of about two-thirds of the whole 
population, though nearly three millions are now em- 
ployed in exotic occupation such as railways, tele- 
graphs, cotton and jute mills, coal and gold mines, 
and tea and coffee estates. 

It is believed that, in the times succeeding the 
stone ages. Upper India was inhabited by more or 
less dark-coloured tribes, who were gradually driven 
southwards by fairer peoples from the north, of 
Aryan stock, but whose descendants are still found 
in various remote and hilly tracts. The Hindoos 
hold that the earliest of their Vedas or historic hymns 
was written 3000 years before the birth of Christ, 
when the eleventh dynasty was reigning in Egypt, 

4 



EARLY HISTORY 

and the great pyramid of Cheops had already stood 
1000 years, but it is considered doubtful if the book 
and religion of the Vedas really existed more than 
800 years before the foundation, in the sixth century, 
of the religions of Zoroaster, Buddha, and Confucius. 
Later Vedas describe conditions not unlike those at 
present existing, with the caste system well estab- 
lished, and the Brahmins occupying that position 
of pre-eminence which the spread of English educa- 
tion has only confirmed, albeit the recipients are now 
anxious to rule India without any help from Britain 
but that of her arms, and without any of that super- 
vision which ensures equal justice to all castes and 
classes. 

The Brahmins simplified the Vedic faith, and 
made it intelligible to the people as a religion of 
one God in three revelations of the Creator, Pre- 
server, and Destroyer, and they absorbed into the 
Hindoo Pantheon the masses of the people who wor- 
shipped the forces of nature and their manifestation 
in man. 

As long ago as the time when yEschylus, Sopho- 
cles, and Euripides were writing in Greece, they had 
worked out a system of philosophy, law, medicine, 
and music, much of which, through the agency of 
the Arab scholars at the Abbasid court at Baghdad, 
was introduced into Europe. Their chief epics are 
the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the former of 
which relates to contests which took place round 
Delhi two or three hundred years before the date 
of the epics of Homer. 

5 



INDIA 

The Brahmins had hardly estabHshed their ascend- 
ency, when Buddha rose, about 540 B.C., to found 
the religion which still, in point of numbers, is the 
greatest in the world. The same century witnessed 
the foundation of the system of Zoroaster, which 
obtained in Persia till it was driven out by the 
Mohammedans, when a small minority fled and 
settled on the west coast of India, to found the com- 
mercial prosperity of Bombay, to provide repre- 
sentatives for the Indian Legislative Councils, and, 
until the present day, two members to the British 
Parliament. 

The system of Buddha inculcated the efficacy of 
works, the uselessness of priests, the futility of sac- 
rifice. It flourished as a rival to Brahminism till 
the eve of the Mohanunedan conquests in the ninth 
century, when it was driven to the north and north- 
east of the Himalayas, and to the farther east, after 
absorbing the indigenous tree and serpent worship, 
and refining the coarser superstitions of the aborigi- 
nal Indians. 

To the Greeks, to whom we owe so much in so 
many other directions, we also owe our earliest 
accounts of India. Although the father of history 
wrote of the eastern Ethiopians, and Darius, son of 
Hystaspes, added part of the north-west of the sub- 
continent to the Persian Empire, it was not until the 
expedition of Alexander (327 B.C.) that the Greeks 
came in actual contact with what is now called the 
Punjaub, and the country lying between it and 
Persia proper. Of the Greek writers, Ktesias {circ. 

6 



EARLY HISTORY 

400 B.C.), survives in mere fragments. But even in 
his time the indigenous Indians were subject to for- 
eign domination, or were secured from subjugation 
in inaccessible mountains, propitiating by presents 
the kings of the immigrant Aryans. Megasthe- 
nes was sent as ambassador by Seleucus, the ruler 
of a fair fragment of Alexander's divided empire, 
to Chandragupta, king of Palibrotha, or Patna, 
about 300 B.C. His writings are of great value, and 
any traveller in the Punjaub to-day can confirm his 
statement that the inhabitants exceed the ordinary 
stature, and are distinguished by their proud bear- 
ing. Subsequent historians have noted, as he did, 
that, under ordinary circumstances, during war in 
India, husbandmen were regarded as a class sacred 
and inviolable, whereby warfare was rendered less 
terrible than it is in civilised countries. Manucci, 
however, one of the best witnesses, dissipates this 
comfortable theory by actual relation of what oc- 
curred in the reign of Aurangzeb. At the present 
day, when socialism raises its head, all may admire, 
as he did, laws *' which bound everyone equally, but 
allowed property to be unevenly distributed." 

Amateur critics of the policy of the Government 
of India may learn from Megasthenes (confirmed by 
Strabo, 20 a.d.) that the Indians paid land tribute 
to the king, "because all India is the property of the 
Crown, and no private person is permitted to own 
land. The husbandman tilled the land on condition 
of receiving one-fourth of the produce." 

Those who think that the English introduced 

7 



INDIA 

strong drink into India will learn with surprise from 
this ancient writer that the Indians of his day drank 
wine. Some light is also thrown upon a subject 
which even now excites controversy by the state- 
ment that women bore children at the age of seven, 
and became old at forty. A Greek merchant wrote 
the "Periplus of the Erythrean Sea" probably about 
80 A.D., and he tells of trade in slaves, horses, mules, 
butter, ivory, pearls, silk, and porphyry, besides 
many kinds of plants and their produce, including 
spice, indigo, and frankincense. Much business was 
done too in rice, pepper, and wine, in iron, copper, 
gold, precious stones, and wearing apparel. In all 
these substances, the author traded, making voyages 
from Berenice, in the southern extremity of Egypt, 
to African, Arabian, and Indian ports. 

Arrian, the pupil of Epictetus, and contemporary 
of Marcus Aurelius, writing about 150 a.d., recorded 
the fact that superintendents holding an office analo- 
gous to that of Chinese censors, reported every- 
thing that took place to the king, where the people 
had such a one, or to the magistrates where they 
were self -governed — that is to say, where there 
were independent towns like the Greek republics. 
He found the caste system in full force and vigour. 
If these ancient writers mixed fable and fact, the 
inhabitants of India at the present day hardly dis- 
tinguish between mythological and historical periods, 
and it is remarkable that, with the exception of these 
old Greek writings, no histories have been composed 
about India until the time of the Mohammedan 

8 



EARLY HISTORY 

conquest. The Hindoos, indeed, are not chroni- 
clers, and in the past they preferred, as to a great 
extent they do at present prefer, speculation and 
philosophy to facts and deductions of more imme- 
diate practical value. Thus peculiar importance 
attaches to such information as we have regarding 
the Grseco-Bactrian kingdom. It is with some 
surprise we find Philostratos recording that the 
Pythagorean philosopher, Apollonius, in the preced- 
ing century, had been received on the banks of the 
Indus by a Greek-speaking king, the simplicity of 
whose life and personal appointments survives to 
this day amongst the princes of south-western India, 
who have never come under the immediate influence 
of foreign rule. These Greek writers constantly refer 
to the considerable commerce carried on between 
Rome and the Malabar coast until the third cen- 
tury of our era, and 600 years previously Herodotus 
realised more fully than we do to-day in England 
"that there are many races of Indians who do not 
speak the same language as one another." Twenty 
centuries ago the Romans realised the propinquity 
of India better than we do to-day: ''^Quantum enim 
est quod ah ultimis litorihus HispancB usque ah Indos 
jacet. Paucissimorum dierum spatium.'* , 

These old writers describe the complex and civil- 
ised character of life in ancient Indian cities, where 
there were inspectors of industrial arts, and enter- 
tainments, of births, deaths; of retail and barter; of 
weights, measures, and manufactures, and of military 
and naval affairs. 

9 



INDIA 

While Pliny tells us that the companions of Alex- 
ander had written that India was a third part of the 
world, and the multitude of its inhabitants was past 
reckoning, the Census Commissioner in 1901 records 
the fact that India is, in point of population, about 
a fifth part of the whole world, and that its inhab- 
itants number nearly 300,000,000. 

To this day the Indian Peninsula deserves the 
description given to it in the third century by Diony- 
sius, who praises the lovely land of the Indians, 
*'last of all lands, upon the very lips of the ocean, 
where ascends the sun, scattering heat and radiance 
over the works of gods and men." The India of 
classical times included, of course, Afghanistan and 
the surrounding regions. Seleucus was so occupied 
in founding the monarchy of Syria that he handed 
over to the Chandragupta the Greek conquests in 
the last-named country, and in India, and his grand- 
son, Antiochus, entered into a treaty with Asoka, 
the grandson of Chandragupta, in 256 B.C. For a 
hundred years subsequently the Greek rulers of 
Bactria fitfully invaded India, but, beyond an occa- 
sional discovery of coins, little trace of their domina- 
tion remains. From the time the Greek invasions 
ceased, those of the Scythians or Tartars, and of 
the Turks or Turkomans, commenced. The tribes 
of Central Asia then began to make those descents 
into the more favoured country upon the south-east 
and south-west of their cold and barren home, which 
culminated in the devastation of Genghis Khan and 
Timour the Tartar. They drove the Greek dynasty 

10 



EARLY HISTORY 

from Bactria, destroyed the Greek settlements of 
the Punjaub, and founded a kingdom in Cashmere. 

These inroads continued till the fifth century, 
during which time the indigenous inhabitants strove 
with varying success to withstand the invaders. 
The Scythians and Tartars belonged to four great 
races: the Mongolians from the country north of 
the Great Wall of China; the Tungusians, to which 
the present Manchu dynasty of China belongs; the 
Ugrians, or Fins, who settled in the west of Asia 
and the north of Europe, to which branch the 
Magyars of Hungary belong, and the Turkish, the 
most famous, which occupied the middle country 
extending from Lake Baikal to the land of the Slavs. 

In 614, Chosroes had advanced the Persian boun- 
dary to the neighbourhood of Constantinople and to 
the Nile, and on his return from this successful cam- 
paign he was invited by an emissary of Mohammed 
to embrace the religion which subsequently became 
that of Persia, and also of the great swarm of bar- 
barians, one branch of which founded the Mogul 
Empire in India. 

During the wars of the Emperor Heraclius with 
the Persians, the latter joined forces with the Avars, 
who, however, besieged Constantinople, whereupon 
the distracted Emperor entered into alliance with the 
Turks, but no sooner had he thus triumphed over 
the Persians than the Arab followers of Mohammed 
commenced to conquer the provinces he had hardly 
rescued from the successor of Cyrus. Thus Islam 
marched towards India. The prophet Mohammed, 

11 



INDIA 

born in 569, a homeless and friendless fugitive in 
622, in 630 declared war upon Heraclius, Emperor 
of the East, and within a hundred years of his death, 
in 632, his successors had defeated the feeble descend- 
ant of Chosroes on the field of Cadesia, in 710. The 
conquest of Khorassan was followed by that of 
Transoxiana, when for the first time the Crescent 
appeared on the banks of the Indus, and the con- 
nection of the Mohammedans with India was com- 
menced, in that full tide of glory and fanaticism 
which spread the faith of Islam from the Guadal- 
quivir to the sands of Sind. 

To the era of Mohammedan conquests succeeded 
one of letters, and the rivals who divided the inheri- 
tance of Islam — the Fatimite in Africa, the Omme- 
iad in Spain, and the Abbasid in Baghdad — vied 
with one another in the encouragement of learning. 

Meanwhile India, whither expeditions had been 
sent in the reign of Othman in 636, and later in 
662 and 664, had rest till 712. Though in the ninth 
century the Arabs took Crete and Sicily, and threat- 
ened Rome, the adoption of a Turkish guard by the 
Caliphs was only one of many signs of the seeds of 
decay. Africa and Spain became independent king- 
doms, Syria and Egypt were usurped by Turkish 
slaves, and indigenous Persian dynasties reigned 
in Persia and Khorassan. 

In like manner, the loosely consolidated Empire 
of the Turks lasted only from 545 to 750, though 
the Emperors of Rome and China paid tribute to 
its head; and its broken fragments existed as sepa- 

12 



EARLY HISTORY 

rate and independent kingdoms, of whose history we 
know very Httle, until Mahmud of Ghuzni (1001 to 
1030) rose to power and pre-eminence, and organised 
no less than thirteen invasions of India. 

It was in 650 that the Caliph Othman's Governor 
of Kufa reduced the Persian borders of the Caspian 
Sea, and converted its inhabitants to the faith of 
Islam, while the Governor of Busra subdued the 
provinces of Seistan, Kohistan, Nishapur, Ghor, 
Herat, Merv, and Balkh. 

A further move in the direction of India was made 
in 664, the Caliph Moawiya's general, penetrating 
as far as Multan. In 712 the Arab General Kasim 
invaded Sind and settled in the Indus valley, which 
the Mohammedans retained till 828, though it was 
not till the days of Mahmud of Ghuzni that any per- 
manent occupation was effected. Mahmud was the 
son of Sabuktegin, who was a Turk of the house- 
hold of Alptegin, Governor of Khorassan, under 
the Samani dynasty, which ruled over Transoxiana, 
with its capital at Bokhara, and had risen to emi- 
nence during the reign of Mamun, son of Harun al 
Raschid. ^^ 

Alptegin made himself independent, with a cap- 
ital at Ghuzni, and Sabuktegin became his son-in- 
law, and ultimately his successor. The latter prince 
took Khandahar and marched to the Indus, where 
he defeated the Hindoo King of Lahore, upon whom 
he came down, as the historian Ferishta says, like 
the wolf on the fold. 

Sabuktgin died in 997, and upon his death-bed he 

13 



INDIA 

said that in the efforts man makes to avert disease, 
with the hope of recovery, he resembles the condition 
of the butcher and the sheep which is often bound 
down and shorn of its fleece, so that at last, when 
the moment of death arrives, it permits itself to be 
bound quietly, believing the occasion to be that of 
another shearing, and resigns its throat to the knife. 

No sooner was he secure in the succession to his 
own kingdom than Mahmud looked towards India. 
In 1002, when Ethelred was massacring the Danes 
in England, Mahmud was returning home from a 
massacre of Hindoos, and his first invasion of India. 
During successive expeditions he acquired enormous 
booty, and extended his kingdom in all directions, 
taking Samarcand and Bokhara, then the most 
celebrated cities in Central Asia, capturing Kanouj, 
upon the Ganges, and defeating the Rajah of Lahore. 
But in 1030 he yielded his body to death and his 
soul to immortality, after an inspection of all his 
great possessions, of which he gave away nothing, 
so that the poet Sadi tells of one who saw him long 
after his death in a dream, his body bereft of flesh, 
but the eye of covetousness burning brightly in the 
sunken socket. 

In Mahmud's kingdom, while the population was 
chiefly Persian, the administration was chiefly Turk- 
ish, and his authority in India was vague and ill- 
defined. Of his successors, one caused the fables 
of Pilpay, the Anwar-i-Soheili, to be translated into 
Persian, thereby causing their dissemination over 
most parts of the world. His dynasty ended in 1186 

14 



EARLY HISTORY 

and the house of Ghor, which succeeded, produced 
a conqueror in Mohammed, who, imitating the exam- 
ple of Mahmud, made war upon the Indian rajahs. 
He was assassinated in 1206, whereupon one of his 
Turkish slaves, Kutub, of the Kutub Minor, made 
himself independent at Delhi, and died from a fall 
at polo in 1210. Other slave kings ruled over Delhi 
till 1288, during which period the Moguls, under 
Genghis Khan, came to the banks of the Indus, 
Sind was permanently subjected to Mohammedan 
rule, and Behar and Bengal were added to the crown 
of Delhi. In the middle of the thirteenth century 
the court at this capital was the only Mohammedan 
court not overthrown by the Moguls, and it became 
a place of refuge for the many princes expelled from 
their thrones by Genghis Elan. One of these kings, 
Ghiyas-ud-din, was a patron of letters, and a friend 
of the poet Sadi. Among other wise sayings of his 
is this: "that it is better for a king to be obstinate 
than vacillating, as in the first case he might chance 
to be right, but in the latter he is sure to be wrong. " 
The Tartar house of Khilji now reigned at Delhi 
(1288-1320), and of its kings one, Ala-ud-din, repulsed 
the Moguls, and conquered the Deccan and Mala- 
bar. Next came the house of Tughlak (1321-1414), 
founded, like many another royal family, by a suc- 
cessful general. Firuz Tughlak lost Bengal and the 
Deccan, but he constructed the still existing Karnal 
canal, abolished all petty and vexatious taxes, and 
died in 1388, leaving behind him an enviable repu- 
tation. His successors lost other provinces and in 

15 



INDIA 

1398 Timour the Tartar, commonly called Tamer- 
lane, after conquering Persia and Transoxiana and 
invading Georgia, Mesopotamia, and Russia, was 
proclaimed Emperor of India. Genghis Khan was 
a Mongol, but his army was chiefly comprised of 
Turks, and when he died, in 1227, he had overthrown 
all the independent kingdoms of Tartary, and 
taken Northern China, Khorassan, and Transoxiana. 
Timour himself was a Turk though he revived the 
Tartar, Mongol, or Mogul empire. He annexed Persia 
and reduced Turkestan to obedience, but within one 
hundred years from his death, in 1405, Persia and 
Transoxiana were overrun by nomad Turkomans, 
and his descendant, Babar, flying from the Uzbegs, 
founded the Mogul Empire in India. Timour en- 
tered the country in which his descendant was to 
found the greatest of its Oriental dynasties by way 
of Cabul, took Delhi, from which Mohammed Tugh- 
lak had fled, and slaughtered 100,000 prisoners. He 
cared little for the consolidation of his conquest, 
and left it a prey to disorder. From 1414 the Sey- 
yids ruled as lieutenants of Timour's dynasty, and 
when the Lodis succeeded, in 1450, they held the 
Punjaub and Delhi, other provinces having become 
independent during the anarchy which followed upon 
the invasion of Timour. Little indeed is known 
of the course of events in India during the century 
which preceded the accession of Babar, a period 
remarkable in the world's history for the termina- 
tion of the domination of the Moors in Spain (1491), 
the discovery of America by Columbus (1492), the 

16 



EARLY HISTORY 

arrival of the Portuguese in India by way of the 
Cape of Good Hope, the accession of Henry VIII 
in England, and the conquest of Mexico by Cortez. 
The blight of the Mongol invasion had left India 
completely cut off from participation in world poli- 
tics and commerce, and there was little for such 
chroniclers as existed to relate, beyond a tedious 
procession of wars and rebellions. Babar, then 
ruling in Cabul, invaded India during the reign of 
Ibrahim Lodi, claiming the country as part of the 
inheritance of Tamerlane. He destroyed Lahore in 
1524; in 1526 defeated Ibraham on the fateful field 
of Panipat, and, in the words of the historian Elphin- 
stone, "founded a line of kings, under whom India 
rose to the highest pitch of prosperity, and out of the 
ruins of whose empire all the existing states in that 
country are composed." 

The latter statement is accurate, but if the condi- 
tion of the people, rather than the power and glory 
of the ruler, be regarded as the test, exception must 
be taken to Elphinstone's assertion that under the 
Moguls India rose to the highest pitch of prosperity. 
It would be foreign to the purpose of this little work 
to describe the reigns of the great Moguls, a task 
already performed by master hands. They governed 
no doubt, as we do, through the agency of Hindoos, 
in our case and in theirs alike, chiefly Brahmins, and 
the best of them were tolerant and humane. In con- 
temporary writings and speeches, constant reference 
is made to the golden age of native Indian rule, and 
though the Moguls were foreigners, as we are, they 

17 



INDIA 

were Asiatics, and the existence of a solidarity of 
sentiment, wanting in our case, may be admitted. 
But by common consent Akbar was the best and 
most tolerant of the emperors of this line, and no 
subsequent ruler had so able a Hindoo minister as 
Todar Mai. Yet it was Akbar who laid it down, as 
the governing principle of revenue administration, 
"that there shall be left for every man as much as 
he requires for his own support till the next crop be 
reaped, and for that of his family and for seed. Thus 
much shall be left to him, what remains is the land- 
tax. " Aurangzeb, who collected nothing south of the 
Vindhya Mountains, in 1707 obtained £38,000,000 
land revenue, and a total revenue of £80,000,000, 
while the English collect but £84,000,000 total, 
and under £20,000,000 land revenue from their im- 
mensely larger territories. The accomplished Orient- 
alist, Mr. Irvine, has just published a translation of 
the "Storia do Mogor" by Niccolai Manucci, who 
lived between 1653 and 1708 with Prince Dara 
Shekoh and Aurangzeb. No better witness exists, 
and Manucci tells us that every time a general won a 
victory the heads of villagers were sent as booty to 
Agra, and after twenty-four hours were deposited 
along the highway in pillars built for the purpose, 
each to accommodate a hundred heads. Aurang- 
zeb was one of the ablest and most powerful of his 
line, which produced many great men, but Manucci 
sums up his reign by saying: "in no part of his 
Empire was there any justice, no one thought of 
anything but how to plunder, the revenue was col- 

18 



EARLY HISTORY 

lected by violence, and no remissions were allowed 
for loss of crops." In a subsequent chapter I will 
endeavour to describe the land revenue system now 
in force in India, but it is impossible to pass by 
Elphinstone's statement, capable as it is of such 
serious misconstruction, and refuted as it is by the 
best contemporary witness. The Great Moguls gov- 
erned the greater part of India for two hundred 
years from 1526, and were nominal emperors till 
the mutiny of 1857. Manucci in no way confirms 
the popular belief that this was the golden age. 
Indeed he says: "In these days everybody's thought 
is to steal, and whatever happens it rarely reaches 
the ears of the king, the orders coming from whom 
his officers do not obey. Those who are the most 
distant from the court suffer most. " He relates too 
an anecdote of a Portuguese he knew, who preferred 
death to becoming a Mohammedan, which throws an 
interesting light on contemporary Christianity, and 
adds: "It is now forty-eight years that I have been in 
India, yet never have I seen a Mohammedan become 
a Christian. I have seen on the Coromandel coast 
and in Bengal a few Malabaris and Bengalis, poverty- 
stricken Hindoos, become Christians, but it was 
from compulsion of hunger, or to get married to 
some Christian. Even then they never refrained 
from Hindoo practices." As to the justice of the 
Great Moguls, Aurangzeb, starting to wage war 
against the Deccani kings of Bijapur and Golconda, 
gave orders that eighty men should be bound and 
beheaded in a kneehng position on either side of the 

19 



INDIA 

route he would traverse; which slaughter of innocent 
peasants was by way of sacrifice and prayer for 
success in his enterprise. The founder of the Mogul 
dynasty, Babar, fortunately bequeathed to posterity 
the memoirs of his adventurous life written in the 
Turkish language. His father was fifth in descent 
from Tamerlane. He was, therefore, a Turk, though 
his mother was a Mogul, a race of which he himself 
speaks with contempt in his memoirs, but the Indians 
use this generic term for a Mohammedan who enters 
India from beyond Afghanistan. Babar, a brave, 
simple, and pleasure-loving monarch, compelled all 
the Mohammedan princes in India to acknowledge 
his supremacy, and was fighting for the faith against 
the Hindoos in the year 1534, which saw the victory 
of the Protestant over the Roman Catholic religion 
in England. He was defeated in Buxar by one of 
his own lieutenants, the Governor of Behar and 
Bengal, and was obliged in his flight to cross the 
Ganges on an inflated skin. When he reached 
Omerkote, with only seven attendants, his Queen 
gave birth to the illustrious Akbar, the greatest of 
all the great Moguls. The revolting Governor, Sher 
Shah, built caravanserais, wells, and avenues from 
Bengal to the Indus, and of his second son, who 
succeeded him, it was said: "Empire is no man's 
inheritance, but belongs to him who hath the longest 
sword." The second son's sword was long enough 
to enable the wearer to supplant his eldest brother, 
but was not long enough to maintain his kingdom, 
and the son and successor of Babar, Humayun, who 

20 



EARLY HISTORY 

died just after his return to India, left his preca- 
rious inheritance, including Bengal, to Akbar, then a 
youth of thirteen years, whose minister, Bairam, 
defeated the rebellious General Hemu in 1556 at 
Panipat, on which field the fate of India has several 
times been decided. Practically the whole of India 
became more or less subject to Akbar, though this 
statement could not have been made with any 
approach to truth of any one of his predecessors. 
The population of the conquered realms was made 
up of the aborigines, of Scythians and Tartars, and 
of the races who invaded the country from the 
north and are commonly called Aryans. Buddhism 
was the centripetal force which had to some extent 
welded together this loose, amorphous mass, but in 
the seventh century Brahminism had revived, and in 
the ninth it had triumphed. In its present aspect 
it represents the union of the Vedic faith of the orig- 
inal Brahmins with Buddhism, and with the rude 
and elementary superstitions of the aboriginal tribes. 
Brahmin pantheism is capable of including every- 
thing, and would before now probably have ab- 
sorbed the Christian converts but for their rejection 
of caste. To this day, the majority of the people of 
India are animists — animism being that form of 
faith which used to be called fetichism, or the 
worship of tangible and inanimate objects, in the 
belief that they are possessed of some mysterious 
power. South of the Vindhya range, the boundary 
between Hindustan and the Deccan, were three 
great Hindoo kingdoms, with their capitals, Mysore, 

21 



INDIA 

Tan j ore, and Madura. The Hindoo kingdom of 
Vizayanagar lasted from 1118 till 1565, and disputed 
the hegemony of the Deccan with the southern 
Mohammedan kingdoms. In the reign of Moham- 
med Tughlak, a contemporary of Richard II of 
England and of Philip de Valois of France, the em- 
pire of Delhi extended from the Himalayas and the 
Indus on the north-west and north-east, to the sea on 
the east and west, though much of Rajputana was 
independent. Between 1489 and 1688 there were 
five Mohammedan states in the Deccan, formed out 
of the fragments of the Bahmani kingdom, with 
their respective capitals : Bejapur, Golconda, Ahmed- 
nugger, Elichpur, and Bedi; and the ruins of the first- 
named city eloquently attest the greatness of the 
former kingdom. They include masterpieces of Sara- 
cenic architecture, and the largest dome in the world, 
which covers an area of 18,000 square feet unin- 
terrupted by supports. It was here that Ferishta 
resided and completed his history, a valuable mine 
for the later Indian historian, but one in which 
writers of the anti-British school do not care to dig. 
Besides the Hindoo and Mohammedan kingdoms, to 
which brief reference has been made, there remained 
the Rajput States which had never been conquered. 
Insufficient as are the materials for writing Indian 
history, there are, thanks to the Hakluyt Society, 
publications which give some idea of the internal 
state of the country in the fifteenth and the be- 
ginning of the sixteenth centuries. The commercial 
intercourse, which had been carried on between 

22 



EARLY HISTORY 

India and Rome through the Red Sea, hardly sur- 
vived the division of the Roman Empire into east 
and west, when it was supplanted by trade with 
Constantinople carried through Persia by caravan. 
The Arab conquests next interrupted intercourse 
between India and the Byzantine Empire, and in 
the tenth century intercourse was reopened with 
Venice through Egypt, and in the eleventh century 
the republics of Genoa and Venice, consequent upon 
the irruptions of the Turks into Syria and Palestine, 
developed considerable commerce with India. This 
trade subsequently became a Venetian monopoly, 
till the close of the fifteenth century, when the Por- 
tuguese in turn profited by the discovery of America 
and the rounding of the Cape. 

Nikitin, a Russian traveller of 1470, dwelt upon 
the contrast between the brilliance of the court and 
the poverty of the people in the Deccan. Babosa, a 
Portuguese, in the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, described the people of Gujerat as prosperous 
and well-found. He speaks of the roofed and tiled 
houses of the town, of the trade in cloth, of the silk 
manufactures of Bombay, and of the dealings of the 
west coast in cocoa and areca nuts, spices and drugs; 
nor is his account of the Malabar coast, that fertile 
and pleasant land, any less satisfactory. 

It seems that the Mohammedan kings of the 
time were accessible to their subjects, and personal 
in their rule, though practically absolute authority 
was delegated to governors of provinces. The army 
was composed of levies, supplied fully equipped by 

23 



INDIA 

local chiefs, and by individual soldiers who served 
for hire. The Hindoos had to pay the poll-tax, but 
they were generally employed in the administration 
and sometimes as generals. The Emperor Babar 
in his memoirs says that the revenue officials, mer- 
chants, and work-people were all Hindoos, and much 
the same might be said at the present day, for 
the actual government is generally in the hands of 
Brahmins, who are supervised by a handful of civil 
servants who form a corps d' elite. There can be no 
doubt that the Mohammedan conquerors of India 
soon lost their fierce proselytising zeal and intoler- 
ance, and treated the Hindoos with leniency and 
toleration. They coined silver and gold and Akbar 
fixed the rupee at very much its present weight. 
Before his day the Indian Mohammedans had 
adopted the muslin robe and slippers which they now 
wear, and their character as well as their costume 
has changed, since they left the uplands of Central 
Asia for the river plains of Hindustan, whence some 
as a ruling class migrated to the "wide stony wolds 
of the Deccan. " Akbar was cut off from the Afghan 
base which his predecessors had possessed, and 
partly on this account, and partly, no doubt, from 
statesmanship, he determined to pursue a policy 
of toleration and conciliation. The contemporary 
chronicle known as the Akbarnama of Abul Fazl, 
the eminent minister, throws an interesting light 
upon the Emperor's methods of administration. 
One day he came upon two bodies of Hindoos, who 
were quarrelling about the possession of a sacred 

24 



EARLY HISTORY 

bathing place. He first of all endeavoured to effect 
a friendly settlement, and finding this impossible 
told them to fight it out, and saw fair play. Had 
this solution been adopted during the recent dis- 
turbances in eastern Bengal, little would have been 
heard of the Hindoo case, for the Mohammedans 
would have easily settled all disputes in their own 
favour. Akbar tried alternately violence and con- 
ciliation in order to subjugate the Rajput States, 
which was never completely effected. He took Gu- 
jerat, recovered Bengal and Behar, annexed Cash- 
mere, and tried, with indifferent success, to subdue 
Afghanistan. This was the first war made by a 
ruler of Hindustan against that country. Sind was 
next subdued and Kandahar recovered, so that 
the Mogul Empire now extended from Afghanistan 
across the whole of India north of the Vindhya 
Mountains, while the Deccan proved an insoluble 
problem. Those breezy uplands bred heroines, and 
Chand Bibi of Ahmednugger fired copper, silver, and 
gold coins at the Moguls, when iron was exhausted, 
and was firing away the Crown jewels when her 
valorous soul was quenched, a worthy prototype 
of the Ranee of Jhansi. Akbar returned to Agra 
from this campaign in 1601 — the year in which the 
first East India Company was founded, and in which 
the first English ships reached India — and in 1605 
he died. He dreamt of an eclectic religion, embra- 
cing all that was best in all the chief faiths of his 
own generation. Probably he was for the most part 
sincere, possibly, dike his contemporary, Henry IV 

25 



INDIA 

of France, who thought Paris worth a Mass, his 
rehgion was subservient to his poHcy of conciHa- 
tion. He discouraged suttee and child marriage, and 
allowed Hindoo widows to marry again, thus antici- 
pating some of the reforms effected by the English. 
His religious system died with him. His revenue 
system was borrowed from that of Sher Shah, the 
Afghan king of Delhi, who died in 1545, a great 
monarch, who said that his life was not long enough 
to allow of his doing sufficient good to his people. 
All the cultivable lands in the Empire were meas- 
ured and divided into three classes according to 
their fertility, the demand of the State being fixed 
at one-third of the gross produce, as against a rough 
general average of one-fourteenth which we get. 
Settlements were thus effected which lasted for ten 
years as against thirty of our present system, and 
measurements and classifications were recorded in 
the village accounts, just as they now are. Akbar's 
Dewan was the famous Todar Mai, and his finance 
minister the hardly less celebrated Abul Fazl. Sir 
William Hunter concluded that the revenue collected 
from a part of India by the Great Mogul ex- 
ceeded that received by the British from their more 
extended and far greater Empire, and it is prob- 
able that the land-tax of the present day is, on 
an average, less than a quarter of what was exacted 
by Akbar. There were then no police except the 
hereditary village watchmen, and the chief land- 
owners were held responsible for the protection 
of life and property. The rural watchmen usually 

26 



EARLY HISTORY 

belonged to the robber class, but that was the case 
until late in the nineteenth century in the extreme 
south of India, where the system, now abandoned, 
worked fairly well. The army consisted chiefly of 
cavalry, and the troopers were men of the yeoman 
class, who supplied their own horses and weapons. 
This arrangement practically survives in the native 
cavalry regiments to the present day. The infantry 
of the line were paid six rupees a month, and, in 
theory at any rate, all males capable of bearing arms 
were liable to service. Akbar's successor, Jahangir, 
regarded his wife as a colleague upon the throne, and 
they reigned in a fashion not unlike that of Justin- 
ian and Theodora, her name being engraved on the 
coins with that of the Emperor. It was in this reign, 
in the year 1616 that Sir Thomas Roe arrived as 
ambassador of James I, who sent him in the hope 
of obtaining more favourable terms for British trade 
at Surat, and on the west coast of India, where silk, 
spice, pepper, precious stones, and cotton were 
bartered in exchange for knives and broadcloth. 
When Jahangir died, in 1627, his dominions were 
practically coterminous with those of Akbar, for his 
endeavours to conquer the Deccan were fruitless. 

His successor. Shah Jehan, a contemporary during 
the long reign of Charles I and Cromwell, and of 
Louis XIII and Louis XIV, conducted the usual 
wars, with less than the usual unsuccess in the 
Deccan, into which he introduced the revenue sys- 
tem of Todar Mai. During the reign of Shah Jehan, 
the Mogul Empire reached its zenith, but Elphin- 

27 



INDIA 

stone, than whom no man was more competent to 
form an opinion, considers that the condition of the 
people must have been worse than in the most 
badly governed state in modern Europe. It was 
this emperor who rebuilt and adorned Delhi, con- 
structing the Great Mosque, the palace, the little 
Musjid, and the Taj Mahal. No sooner was Aurang- 
zeb formally installed upon his throne, in the year of 
the restoration of the Stuarts in England, than war 
broke out between Bejapur and the Mahrattas, who 
were a race of cultivators living in the hills of Goa 
and Surat, and the western extremity of the Deccan 
plateau. Sivaji, the national hero, began life as 
a brigand, and little was heard of the Mahrattas 
till his day, though Ferishta records that as early 
as 1485 the Mohammedan kings of the Deccan had 
already enlisted these hardy hillmen in their service. 
In 1648 Sivaji had acquired possession of several 
fortresses belonging to Bejapur, as a result of his 
wars with the ruler of which kingdom he was placed 
in possession of considerable territory; and of Indian 
chiefs he first realised that infantry was of greater 
importance than cavalry. Aurangzeb had made 
the fatal mistake of reducing the Mohammedan king- 
doms of the Deccan instead of invoking their aid 
against the rising strength of the Mahrattas. The 
latter continued to grow in power, and soon the 
states of Bejapur and Golconda commenced to pay 
tribute to Sivaji, who presently arrogated to himself 
the right to levy the famous chauth, or quarter of the 
revenue, as the price of security against attacks by 

28 



EARLY HISTORY 

his followers. Another false step taken by Aurang- 
zeb was the revival of the obnoxious poll-tax levied 
on Hindoos, and, departing from all the wise prece- 
dents of his line, he forbade the entertainment of 
Hindoos in the Government service. The reimposi- 
tion of the tax on infidels and the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes were two events of equal import to 
the Mogul and French monarchies. The interests 
of the Rajputs now became identical with those of the 
Mahrattas, and the latter bandits became champions 
of the Hindoo religion and nationality. All Rajpu- 
tana was in a blaze, and the star of Sivaji was ever 
in the ascendant in the south, where the Moham- 
medan kings of the Deccan called him in to aid them 
to maintain their independence against Aurangzeb. 
In 1683 the Emperor left Delhi, never to return 
before his death in 1707, the intervening period being 
spent in vain efforts to reduce the Deccan to submis- 
sion. His last years were clouded by the intrigues 
of his sons, as well as by the failure of his arms, 
and when he died, in the eighty-ninth year of his 
life, and the fiftieth of his reign, he said: "Every- 
where I see nothing but God. I have committed 
many crimes, and know not how I shall be pun- 
ished. The death agony presses on one, I am going. 
Come what may I have launched my vessel on the 
waves. Farewell, farewell." Elphinstone says of 
him that "he would indeed have been a good and 
great king had he not had a heart cold, calculating, 
and a stranger to all generous and ennobling im- 
pulses." His land revenue reached thirty-eight and 

29 



INDIA 

one-half million sterling, and his total income was 
seventy -seven and one-half millions. The usual frat- 
ricidal strife followed upon his death, and resulted 
in the ultimate victory of Shah Alam, the eldest son, 
whose Viceroy in the Deccan now openly paid chauth 
to the Mahrattas. The new Emperor first offered 
the Rajputs practical independence in return for 
peace, and turned his own attention to the Sikhs. 
This religious sect, afterwards so famous in Indian 
history, was founded at the end of the fifteenth 
century by Nanak, who recognised no distinction 
of caste, but preached universal toleration, and the 
unity of the Godhead. Since the death of the tol- 
erant Akbar they had been persecuted, and in 1675 
their Guru, or leader, created a religious and mili- 
tary commonwealth, every member of which was a 
soldier. None were allowed to shave, and each and 
every one was bound to carry cold steel about 
his person — of which rule of conduct the quoit 
in the turban is now the outward and visible sign. 
The Sikhs respect the Brahmins, and forbid the 
slaughter of cattle, but their resemblance to the orth- 
odox Hindoo in other respects is small, and they 
have acquired a very distinctive character. Farokh- 
sir was a prince of no great merit, but he fought and 
defeated the Sikhs, whose sectaries he treated with 
the utmost barbarity. The Deccan in his reign had 
now become almost independent under its Viceroys 
or Nizams, who acknowledged the Mahratta sov- 
ereignty, and duly paid their chauth or tribute. The 
real governors of the Empire were the Seyyids, two 

30 



EARLY HISTORY 

brothers who were king-makers, but when their 
creature, the king, tired of them, the Nizam of the 
Deccan became chief minister, while the power of 
the Mahrattas passed into the hands of a family of 
Brahmin village accountants in the Konkan. Bal- 
aji Visvanath became their Peshwa or minister, and 
he endeavoured to realise, as a regular tribute and 
revenue, one-quarter of the revenue, as settled by 
Todar Mai, of the Mogul Empire. During its 
decline and fall, however, nothing like this amount 
was collected, and Mogul revenue and Mahratta 
chauth alike were levied by force and not according 
to law. The different heads of account in one and 
the same area were collected by different agencies, 
in order to prevent any one authority from becom- 
ing independent of the central power at Delhi, an 
object which, none the less, the arrangement failed 
to secure. One result, however, of this system was 
of a permanent character, for the intricacy of the 
accounts led to the universal use of Brahmin account- 
ants, thereby increasing the ascendency of the caste, 
always so powerful in India, to which the family 
of the Peshwa belonged. To Balaji succeeded Baji 
Rao, who first invaded the northern provinces of the 
tottering empire, saying *'let us strike the withered 
trunk, and the branches will fall of their own accord." 
At this period rose to eminence the families of the 
Gaekwar of Baroda, Holkar of Indore, and the Sind- 
hias of Gwalior, who were lieutenants of the Peshwa 
Baji-Rao. It was now evident that any effort to 
oppose the Mahrattas would be fruitless, and the 

31 



INDIA 

Nizam therefore joined them in self -aggrandisement 
at the expense of the empire, the breaking up of 
which was precipitated by the invasion of Nadir 
Shah. The eastern portion of the tableland of 
Herat formed a kind of neutral territory between 
the Persian and the Mogul Empires, and the Safavi 
Shah Hosain was involved in warfare with the 
Ghiljis, who occupied the western portion of that 
tableland. The tribesmen, however, invaded and 
took Ispahan, whereupon Tahmasp, the? /son of 
Hosain, invoked the aid of Nadir Kuli, a renowned 
freebooter of that day, who, instead of placing 
Tahmasp upon the throne of Persia, himself, in 1736, 
assumed the title of Shah-in-Shah, to which, by the 
conquest of Balkh and Bokhara, he gave an actual- 
ity that lofty designation had long lacked. The 
distracted empire of the Moguls was an irresistible 
temptation to such a warrior, and, a pretext for 
attack being soon found, he took Cabul, and as 
the Emperor had omitted to pay to the Afghans 
the subsidies they claimed, he passed unobstructed 
through the mountains, crossed the Indus, defeated 
the Imperial troops at Kurnal in February, 1739, 
and gave Delhi over to fire and sword. Almost 
immediately, however, he departed home with all 
the booty he could obtain, and with a treaty in his 
pocket whereby the Emperor relinquished all claim 
to everything west of the Indus. Nine years later 
he was assassinated, in consequence of his mad 
endeavours to suppress the Shiyya doctrines, which 
the Persians since the Mohammedan conquest ever 

32 



EARLY HISTORY 

have, and still do, profess. When Nadir Shah had 
left, the Mahrattas again began to harry the pros- 
trate empire. Balaji Baji succeeded Baji as third 
Peshwa, but the curse of domestic dissension now 
fell in turn upon the Mahrattas, and the French 
appeared for the first time to aid the Nizam's son, 
Salabat Jung, to oppose them. Ahmed IQian, after- 
wards Ahmed Shah, of the Durani tribe, succeeded 
to the authority of Nadir Shah in Khorassan, and 
the country between the Indus and the Persian fron- 
tier in 1748, and in the same year a prince of the 
same name succeeded to the Mogul throne, only 
to make way almost immediately for Alamgir, from 
whose feeble grasp Ahmed Shah Durani wrested 
Delhi, leaving behind him a Rohilla chieftain in 
command, who was presently expelled, with the aid 
of the Peshwa's brother, Ragoba, who seized Lahore 
and threatened Oudh. At this juncture, Ahmed 
Shah Durani for the fourth time invaded the Pun- 
jaub, and defeated the Mahrattas under Sindhia 
and Holkar. It was not against the Mogul emperor 
that the Afghan king made war, but against the 
Mahrattas, whose power was now, in 1760, at its 
height. The whole of the empire, and more of the 
south of India than ever acknowledged its authority, 
was either part of, or paid tribute to, their power. 
Their forces, estimated at about 300,000, and the 
Durani forces of 100,000, faced one another, in 
January, 1761, upon the classic battle-ground of 
Panipat, with the usual result that the invaders 
were victorious. The Mahrattas retired to their 



INDIA 

conquests in Hindustan, and the dynasties of the 
Peshwa and the Mogul alike were overwhelmed in 
a common catastrophe. 

The Mahrattas recovered a great deal of their 
once great power, but that of the Moguls was finally 
broken, and upon its fragments rose independent 
states, with which, and with the relations of the 
Europeans with which, the history of India from 
this date is chiefly concerned. 



34 



CHAPTER II 

LATER HISTORY 

GEORGE III had sat upon the throne a year 
when the third battle of Panipat was 
fought, and aheady, in the reign of Charles 
II, the East India Company, which dated from the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth, had become sufficiently 
powerful to obtain a new charter, and the cession 
of Bombay. Fort St. George had been founded 
in 1639, but it was not till 1698 that Aurangzeb 
granted a site upon the Hoogly for the occupation 
of our traders in Bengal. As the Mohammedan in- 
vaders all came by land, so did the Europeans all 
arrive by sea. The trade between India and Europe 
which passed by the Red Sea through Egypt, and 
paid heavy transit duty to the Sultan, fired the am- 
bition of the Portuguese to try and discover some 
direct sea route whereby they could avoid the tran- 
sit duties, and Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape 
and anchored off Calicut, in 1498, and returned to 
Portugal with a letter for his king from the Zamorin. 
Cabral, in the following year, quarrelled with the 
latter potentate and withdrew to Cochin, the Rajah 
of which state, true to the traditional policy of his 
house, received them with kindly hospitality. Two 

35 



INDIA 

years later Vasco da Gama again arrived at Calicut 
to avenge the treatment Cabral had experienced. 
But Alfonso Albuquerque, "in whose presence the 
sea trembled," was the real founder of the Portu- 
guese power in the East. He captured Goa, held 
Ormuz, and the spice island of Malacca, and with 
his dismissal began that decline which everywhere 
proceeded during the period in which the crown of 
Portugal was united with that of Spain, from 1580 
to 1666. The Mahrattas took Bassein, the Dutch 
seized Malacca and Ceylon, and the Persians cap- 
tured Ormuz; but it was the Dutch who struck 
down the Portuguese monopoly, their objective be- 
ing the spice trade of the Eastern Archipelago. In 
1620 the Dutch East India Company was founded; 
in 1605 they expelled the Portuguese from Amboyna, 
and in 1619 founded Batavia. With the exception 
of the English, the only other European country 
which owned land settlements in India was Den- 
mark, which bought Tranquebar from the Rajah 
of Tanjore, and had another settlement at Ser- 
ampore on the Hoogly. These possessions, which 
became famous centres of missionary activity, were 
sold to the English in 1845. Thus it happened that 
the French were the only serious competitors of 
our fellow-countrymen, their chief possessions being 
Chandarnagore on the Hoogly, and Pondicherry on 
the Coromandel coast. In 1746 they took from us 
Madras, which was restored at the peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle, 1748, but the real fight for India began 
between Dupleix and Clive, when the former states- 

36 



LATER HISTORY 

man endeavoured to found a French Empire by 
intervening in the disputed succession to the thrones 
of Hyderabad and Arcot, fragments of the Mogul 
Empire which had become practically independent. 
Ten years before the battle of Panipat, Clive, by 
his defence of Arcot, had made the English name 
feared and respected in Southern India, and two 
years before that battle, Coote had defeated the 
Comte de Lally at Wandewash, after which the 
English remained the masters of the south. In Ben- 
gal the tyranny of Suraj-ud-Daula, and the fact 
that France and England were at war in Europe, led 
up to the important victory, but not great battle, 
of Plassey in 1757, and to the first extensive grant 
of territory to the English, which grant was largely 
increased in 1760 upon the deposition of the Nawab 
Mir Jaffar of Bengal. Subsequently their own 
creature, Mir Cassim, endeavoured to assert his 
independence with such aid as the Emperor, Shah 
Alam, could give, whereupon the English defeated 
him at Buxar in 1764. Clive, however, restored 
Oudh to the Nawab Vizier, and obtained from Shah 
Alam, in return for a fragment of his empire which 
was given back to him, the fiscal administration of 
Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, for which provinces 
there thus obtained a dual management till Warren 
Hastings abolished the system, and sold to the 
Nabob of Oudh the territory which Clive had restored 
to the Emperor, because, when the Mahrattas seized 
that potentate in 1773, Hastings considered that 
the British could neither pay territory nor tribute, 

37 



INDIA 

either directly or indirectly, to the Mahrattas. The 
power of the latter, after the battle of Panipat, was 
divided between the Peshwa, the Bhonsla Rajahs 
at Nagpur, the Sindhias at Gwalior, the Holkars at 
Indore, and the Gaekwars at Baroda. Sindhia and 
Holkar restored Shah Alam to his throne in order to 
use such authority as remained to this shadow of a 
great name, and they held him prisoner till the sec- 
ond Mahratta War, in 1803, whereby the power of 
Sindhia and the Bhonslas was broken, and the Pro- 
tectorate of the Empire was restored to the British. 
The third Mahratta War brought about the defeat 
of Holkar, and the fourth was waged in 1817-1818 
with the Peshwa, when Poona was captured, and 
Baji Rao was deposed and pensioned at Bithoor, 
where he died, in 1853, leaving no family, but an 
adopted son, who subsequently became infamous 
under the name of Nana Sahib. In 1780 and 1790, 
when the British were engaged in war with Hyder 
Ali of Mysore, and his son Tippoo, the Nizam and 
the Mahrattas co-operated with the English in 
the first war and compelled Tippoo to cede half his 
dominions, which the allies divided. In 1799 he 
was crushed by Lord Wellesley, who also brought 
under British authority those fragments of Mogul 
and Mahratta rule, the nawabship of Arcot, and the 
principality of Tanjore. Not only Mysore and the 
Mahrattas engaged the English at this time, but 
the Pindaris were a sore trouble in the land. They 
were camp-followers of the Mahrattas, the flotsam 
and jetsam of distracted India, the debris of the 

38 



LATER HISTORY 

Mogul Empire, "who asked no leave of king or 
chief, as they swept through Hindustan." It cost 
Lord Hastings a regular campaign before he broke 
them, in 1817, in which year also the fall of the 
Peshwa led to the constitution of the Bombay Pres- 
idency, in somewhat its present form. The British 
Government, however, while it then became para- 
mount over the greater part of India, had yet to 
fight against the Mohammedan rulers of Afghan- 
istan. 

Upon the death, in 1773, of Ahmed Shah Durani 
the usual wars and rebellions ensued, but in 1809 his 
descendant, Shuja Shah, was seated upon the Afghan 
throne, and to him the British sent a mission in order 
to establish a defensive alliance, with the ultimate 
result that he was ejected from Cabul and fled to 
India for protection, while Dost Mohammed, of the 
Barakzai family, made himself king in his stead. 
The creation of the strong kingdom of Runjeet Singh 
in the Punjaub relieved India from all fear of Afghan 
invasions, but Dost Mohammed none the less yearned 
to recover Peshawar from the Sikhs, and since the 
Viceroy, Lord Auckland, had no power to gratify 
this wish, and still more because of the pressure 
of Russia through Persia upon Herat, the Viceroy 
decided to replace Dost Mohammed by his own 
creature — the fugitive Shah Shuja, who might fairly 
be expected to carry out his wishes. The thing was 
done accordingly, but the British reckoned without 
the Afghans, who, after a suUen acquiescence of two 
years, killed Sir Alexander Burnes and Sir William 

39 



INDIA 

Macnaghten, and annihilated the army of occupa- 
tion — a disaster which in 1842 Generals PoUok and 
Sale avenged. The administration of Lord Amherst 
(1823-1838), but for the first Burmese War, whereby 
Assam, Arakan, and Tenasserim were ceded to the 
Company, had been comparatively peaceful, and 
Lord William Bentinck, from 1828 to 1835, had 
enjoyed peace broken only by ten days' war, which 
ended in the annexation of the little province of 
Coorg. Lord Auckland, however, besides being in- 
volved in the first Afghan War, was engaged in the 
first, or, as it is commonly called, the opium, war 
with China (1840-1842), at the conclusion of which 
Hong Kong was ceded to Britain, and Shanghai and 
other ports opened to European trade. Lord Ellen- 
borough (1842-1844) conquered Sind, the Amirs of 
which had been unfriendly during the Afghan War. 
Lord Hardinge (1844-1847) fought the hard fight of 
the first Sikh War, as the result of which the coun- 
try between the Sutlej and the Ravi was annexed 
and Henry Lawrence was appointed President at 
the court of the youthful son of Runjeet Singh. It 
remained for Lord Dalhousie (1848-1856) to annex 
the rest of the Punjaub, Oudh, Satara, Jhansi, and 
Nagpur, and a large part of the present province 
of Burma. In thus changing the map of India he 
conducted the second Sikh and the second Burmese 
Wars, but he also opened the first Indian rail- 
way, introduced cheap postage, organised the public 
works, constructed roads and canals, and inaugurated 
the educational system on new and permanent lines. 

40 



LATER HISTORY 

Lord Canning declared war on Persia, which had 
seized Herat, and forced the Shah to renounce all 
claims on this fortress, or on any part of Afghanistan, 
and fought the second Chinese War, as a result 
of which all customary commercial privileges were 
conceded to England and other European powers, 
and to America. The great event, however, of this 
viceroyalty — the greatest event in our occupation 
of India — was the Sepoy mutiny, of which the 
immediate result was the transfer of India from the 
East India Company to the Crown. There is no 
occasion here to relate the incidents of this chap- 
ter in our history, but the conclusions of the latest 
historian, Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, may 
with advantage be recorded. He says that revolt 
was "the outcome of annexations, and of centralisa- 
tion coupled with well-meant but mistaken attempts 
to govern in accordance with systems prevailing 
in the United Kingdom millions of Asiatics, as 
numerous as the peoples of Europe, and of as many 
different religions." The Congress is at the present 
day, with the aid of the Bengali Babus, and the 
newspapers they control, urging us to persevere in 
the very attempts to which Sir Evelyn Wood, with 
so much reason, attributes in no small measure 
the greatest disaster which has occurred during our 
domination in India. 

The tangled web of our relations with Afghan- 
istan received another twist when Lord Lawrence 
(1864-1868) acknowledged Sher Ah, the son of 
Dost Mohammed, as Amir, and this prince was for- 

41 



INDIA 

mally received as siich by Lord Mayo (1868-1872) 
at Umballa. During the viceroyalty of Lord Lytton 
(1872-1876) it became known that Sher Ali had 
made overtures to, and received an envoy from, 
Russia, and, as he refused to entertain a mission 
sent from India, war was declared in 1878; he was 
defeated by General (now Field-Marshal Earl) Rob- 
erts, his son, Yakub Khan, was seated on the throne, 
and a British Resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, was 
appointed to the Afghan court. Within a few 
months Cavagnari was assassinated, Yakub Khan 
abdicated, and the late Amir Abdul Rahman, the 
representative of the line of Dost Mohammed, was 
recognised by Lord Ripon (1880-1884) as Amir. 

The chief event of the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin 
(1884-1888) was the third Burmese War, due far 
more to justifiable fear of French intervention than 
to the misgovernment of King Thebaw, whose per- 
sonal vices certainly, and whose political misdeeds 
probably, have been somewhat exaggerated. As a 
result of the war, Upper Burma was annexed, and 
subsequent viceroyalties up to the present date 
resulted in no important additions to the Empire, 
though Lord Elgin was driven by the force of cir- 
cumstances to take and retain Chitral, two years 
after which event occurred the most serious and 
widespread tribal frontier war we have had in India. 

The viceroyalty of Lord Curzon, still so recent as 
to be the subject of heated controversy, is chiefly 
remarkable perhaps for the policy pursued upon the 
western and north-western land frontier of India. 

42 



LATER HISTORY 

In 1897, on the termination of the Tirah campaign, 
the Secretary of State telegraphed to Lord Elgin 
urging that, with the cessation of hostilities, our 
permanent position and policy should be defined, 
and agreeing with the Viceroy that our interference 
with independent tribes — so far as they can be 
called independent since the Durand line was drawn 
— should be strictly limited in order to avoid serious 
eventual responsibilities involved in the extension of 
administrative control over tribal territory. The 
Secretary of State also urged that the then existing 
arrangements should be modified in view to con- 
centration of force. While he formally concurred 
with the Government of India in ascribing the con- 
certed, simultaneous, and, till then unprecedentedly, 
serious risings of the tribes to fanaticism. Lord 
George Hamilton could not conceal the fact that 
the delimitation of the spheres of British and Afghan 
influence, in accordance with the Durand Conven- 
tion, had naturally led the tribesmen to suspect 
designs upon their independence. There are not a 
few interested in frontier politics, and among them 
Sir Thomas Holdich, who consider that not only 
was this result to be expected, but that a mistake 
was made in determining upon this delimitation, 
which necessarily largely increased our responsibili- 
ties for, and intervention in, tribal affairs. No 
doubt there is a diflSculty in preserving a state of 
civilised administration up to, and ignoring violence 
and rapine immediately beyond, a certain point, 
especially when the inhabitants of either side are not 

43 



INDIA 

a constant but a changing and interchanging quan- 
tity: but it is possible that our susceptibihties in 
this respect are too acute, and have led us on many 
occasions into interference in matters we might well 
have ignored, and into vain and expensive expedi- 
tions. To some, at any rate, it would appear, even 
from the narratives of those responsible for the 
action in question, that the dynastic and domestic 
squabbles of the petty chief of Chitral were such 
as we might have disregarded. Yet they led to our 
occupation of what a great authority describes as 
"a useless, expensive, and burdensome post," since 
invasion from the north is impossible. One serious 
objection to such interference is that it can have no 
finality. If an obligation to impose law and order 
on the turbulent frontier tribes lies upon us in con- 
sequence of a higher standard than that of other 
nations which we impose upon ourselves, why not 
upon similar tribes in Afghanistan? — and, if there, 
why not in Eastern Persia, in Persia generally, in 
Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor? Where, indeed, in 
such a policy can the line be drawn? The money 
spent in mounting guns in solitary valleys, the treas- 
ure lavished upon fortifying natural forts, would 
have sufficed many times over to supply the loans 
solicited on very good security by Persia, our refusal 
to grant which threw the spendthrift Shah into the 
arms of the all-willing Czar. Of course, the Indian 
and Home Budgets are separate and independent 
of one another, but now at any rate it is idle to deny 
the fact that Persia is as much a frontier of India 

44 



LATER HISTORY 

as is Afghanistan, but far weaker, far more vulner- 
able, far more the object of a rival Power's solici- 
tude, so that Indian money might be spent on the 
shores of the Persian Gulf with as much propriety 
as upon cantonments, roads, and railways in and 
for the benefit of Chitral, and other robber-haunted 
border hills. It might be argued that the charges 
in both cases more properly fall on the Imperial 
Exchequer, which would, as regards expenditure 
in the Gulf, to some extent be recouped in conse- 
quence of the revival, which would result therefrom, 
in our fast-falling trade with Persia, though neglect 
of the Indo-Persian question might have led to a 
conflagration beside which the war with the Trans- 
vaal would seem a feeble flame. Not, indeed, that 
Gulf questions have been neglected, even before 
the conclusion of the Convention with Russia. The 
action of the Home Government and the Viceroy, 
Lord Curzon, in regard to the efforts of the French 
to obtain a coaling station at Muscat, and of the 
Turks, whether or not of their own motion, to seize 
Koweit, was prompt, firm, and effectual. 

As has been remarked above, the events of Lord 
Curzon's viceroyalty are of such recent date as to 
be still the subject of considerable controversy. 
There are many, however, which all must approve. 
He wrote off land revenue amounting to £1,320,000, 
and insisted upon a more lenient method of assess- 
ment and greater elasticity in collection. He reduced 
the salt-tax, and raised the limit of exemption from 
income-tax. He, or rather his Government, passed 

45 



INDIA 

an Act in order to preserve to the hereditary culti- 
vator in the Punjaub the land he held by restrict- 
ing freedom of alienation. Whether this Act will in 
the end justify expectations remains to be seen, 
but it was a courageous effort, which also deserves 
praise. The same administration passed a law regu- 
lating labour in mines. Whether this was alto- 
gether needed, and whether it was desirable to deal 
with metalliferous and coal mines in one Act is a 
question of some doubt, but it was at least a meas- 
ure in entire harmony with the prevailing spirit of 
interference with, and protection of, labour, which 
finds favour in so many quarters. As a fact, restric- 
tions enforced in Britain for good and sufficient 
reasons, are seldom desirable, and often injurious 
and unpopular, in India. Witness the prohibition 
against taking women and children underground. 
Nothing is so desirable as to wean pauper agricul- 
turists from the land to the coal mines. Nothing, 
for reasons into which it is unnecessary here to 
enter, is more likely to prevent this result than to 
make it impossible for his wife to bring his food, 
which she cannot do unless she can take the children 
with her. 

Another Act of somewhat similar tendency dealt 
with labour in Assam. The Government of India re- 
garded with suspicion contracts entered into between 
the agents of planters, on behalf of their employers, 
and the natives of Bengal, and the United Provinces, 
who go forth to work on tea estates in Assam, though 
there is overwhelming evidence that these men are 

46 



LATER HISTORY 

well paid and well treated, and they themselves 
give the best proof possible that they know it, by 
settling in large numbers in Assam at the expiration 
of their indentures. It is recorded in the Census of 
1901 that ex-tea-garden coolies hold 90,000 acres 
of land under Government and thus materially 
help to colonise a fertile but backward province. 
This last Act is not working well, and it is devoutly 
to be hoped that, in no long time, planters, who 
are most desirable settlers in India, and who are 
hard hit by the excessive and repeated increases of 
the taxation on tea, may be able to get labour immi- 
grants, not under contract, but free, as the Ceylon 
planters get their coolies from Southern India. A 
new department of commerce and industry was 
created by Lord Curzon's Government, but it proved 
easier to create the department than to find the 
man. In fact, the Government came to the con- 
clusion that it could not do better than appoint 
the most suitable Indian civilian they could find. 
It was very likely a wise decision, but it makes 
the creation of the department a rather nominal 
proceeding. In dealing with famine. Lord Curzon 
found everything ready to hand, and succeeded to 
the experience of his predecessors. Nevertheless j 
he dealt strenuously and effectively with the most 
widespread failure of crops of which there is any 
record, and the conspicuous success of the Govern- 
ment, for which, of course, the Viceroy's colleagues 
and subordinates in India are entitled to equal 
credit, did not avail to silence the bray of virulent 

47 



INDIA 

and malevolent criticism, of the same character as 
that which now impugns the humanity and efficacy 
of the administration of Lord Minto in dealing with 
the epidemic of plague. It was Lord Curzon's 
constant endeavour to make known some, at least, 
of the salient facts connected with Indian administra- 
tion, and it was distinctly advantageous to point 
out the limitations within which the Government 
worked in respect of the extension of irrigation, of 
which a certain school of critics writes, as if it would 
be a simple matter to attach a hose to a tap at the 
foot of Cherrapunji and to irrigate India, as a house- 
holder in Hampstead might irrigate his back garden. 
! Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff 's Commission found that 
the Government might look forward to an exten- 
sion of 3,500,000 acres at an outlay of 8,000,000 
or 9,000,000 sterling, but there was no unlimited 
and illimitable field. Irrigation works can only be 
constructed out of taxes, and should only be con- 
structed when a reasonable return is assured. 

The opening of the Quetti-Nushki trade route, 
the delimitation of the boundary of Seistan and of 
the Aden Hinterland, must be put to the credit of the 
Government of Lord Curzon, who broke new ground 
by touring around the Persian Gulf, and visiting 
ports, wherever the interests of British trade needed 
attention. With his action in respect of the parti- 
tion of Bengal, the north-west frontier, and Tibet, 
it will be necessary to deal in other chapters, and 
it remains here to refer to what was accomplished 
during his viceroyalty in regard to military ad- 

48 



LATER HISTORY 

ministration and education. He assumed office in 
1898, and in the following year severe criticisms were 
passed upon the efficiency of the Indian army, not- 
withstanding the fact that it had done excellent 
work in China, and in South Africa had saved the 
situation at the outset, before it was realised that 
the campaign would be other than exceedingly brief 
and uniformly successful. It was, however, admit- 
tedly necessary to re-arm the native regiments, 
strengthen the artillery, and add to the number of 
the British officers. There were also other im- 
provements and developments, which needed early 
attention. Lord Kitchener since 1902 had been 
Commander-in-Chief, and it was evident that mili- 
tary administration would occupy a leading place 
in the annals of the viceroyalty. The military 
department had up till this time been managed by 
the Member of Council in charge, invariably a soldier 
of distinction, like Generals Sir Henry Brackenbury, 
and Sir Edwin CoUen, to name two recent occupants 
of the post. He was the constitutional adviser of 
the Viceroy on military questions, and the Com- 
mander-in-Chief, who is also appointed as a matter 
of course (extraordinary) Member of Council, is 
responsible for discipline, promotion, mobilisation, 
and other functions properly appertaining to the 
head of the army. But any proposals the Com- 
mander-in-Chief made had necessarily to come before 
the Governor-General in Council, upon the repre- 
sentation of the Military Member, and through 
the Military Department. To this Lord Kitchener 

49 



INDIA 

objected, and in so doing he was not singular among 
Commanders-in-Chief, for several of his predeces- 
sors had, on public grounds, demurred to the posi- 
tion in which they were placed, but either had not 
the power or the will to alter it. Lord Kitchener, 
however, was determined to create an army depart- 
ment dealing with the whole military administra- 
tion, of which he should be the head. Lord Curzon, 
with the support, it must be remembered, of the 
Ordinary Members of his Council, held that under 
such an arrangement all military authority would 
be concentrated in the Commander-in-Chief to the 
practical annihilation of the necessary supremacy 
of the civil power, which would thus be deprived 
of independent military advice. The Secretary of 
State so far amended the proposal as to retain the 
Military Member of Council, while assigning to 
him a position in which the Viceroy and his civil 
councillors thought he would not be able to give 
them independent or authoritative advice upon the 
financial and administrative aspects of proposals 
relating to military matters. In that case they 
thought the Governor-General in Council would 
be left without expert aid and information to face 
the newly constituted, and largely increased, power 
of the Commander-in-Chief. It followed from this 
view that the new Membership of Military Supply 
in their opinion should be filled by an officer they 
considered competent to act as their general adviser 
in military matters. Lord Curzon, who had reluct- 
antly accepted the changes approved, after con- 

50 



LATER HISTORY 

sideration, by a committee, of which Lord Roberts 
and Sir George White, ex-Commanders-in-Chief of 
India, had been members, nominated as new Mem- 
ber for Mihtary Supply, who was to deal in future 
with supply, contracts, military works, remounts, 
and other departmental services, General Barrow, 
a very able oflBcer, then commanding at Peshawar. 
The Secretary of State and the Cabinet at home, 
however, did not think that an officer occupying 
a high, and likely to occupy a higher, combatant 
command was likely to inaugurate the new system 
with an open mind, especially one who, from the 
appointment he had previously held in the Military 
Department, would naturally have a leaning towards 
one view of the controversial position which had 
been created. Lord Curzon insisted that he must 
have a colleague capable of giving advice to the 
Governor-General in Council on questions of general 
military policy, and it was evident he meant fully to 
avail himself of such advice. In short, he desired 
the new Member of Military Supply to be as much 
as possible like the old Military Member. The 
Government at home had another object in view 
and wanted to make the new policy as effectual as 
possible, and the situation in India resolved itself 
into a struggle between the Viceroy and Commander- 
in-Chief — Lord Curzon having explicitly said in 
Hs telegram of 10th August, 1905, that, "if the view 
of the Commander-in-Chief is to prevail it is useless 
for me to remain in India since I could not frame a 
scheme in accordance with it." In another tele- 

51 



INDIA 

gram he truly said "that the question was not one 
of choice of an individual, but of principles under- 
lying future change in the administration." There 
was only one issue. The Viceroy resigned, and at 
his request the telegraphic correspondence was pub- 
lished, to the surprise and regret of those who realised 
the effect it would inevitably have upon the public 
mind in India. Into the technical questions at issue 
it is difficult for others than experts to probe. 
Lord Roberts had found the existing system cum- 
brous, dilatory, and complicated. Sir George White 
and Sir William Lockhart found the difficulties very 
great. Yet the Military Member had tended every 
year to become more of an expert adviser than a 
civil administrator, more and more a rival of the 
Commander-in-Chief, to whom he gave authorita- 
tively independent opinions on purely military ques- 
tions, and conveyed adverse decisions even without 
reference to the Governor-General in Council. Lord 
Kitchener's attitude met with the approval of pro- 
fessional opinion, and it remains to see how the 
new system works. It certainly was not rashly 
or lightly undertaken, and the Committee which 
reported to the India Office was one of unusual 
strength and ability, including the then Secretary 
of State, now Lord Middleton, Lords Roberts and 
Salisbury, Field-Marshal Sir George White, Sir 
James Mackay, Sir Edward Law, and General Sir 
John Gordon. At the same time it must be owned 
that opinion in India inclined to support Lord Curzon 
and the dissenting Members of Council. The one 

52 



LATER HISTORY 

thing certain is that in the eyes of all India the 
Viceroy, hitherto regarded as the outward and 
visible expression of supreme power, engaged in an 
administrative battle with the Commander-in-Chief, 
and was beaten. It is not likely that the disaffected 
and agitator elements in the community failed to 
draw the obvious moral, and to regard the head of 
the Indian administration as a mere mortal after all. 
Mr. Morley, who took office soon after Lord Minto 
became Viceroy, had to deal with the draft rules 
of business proposed by the Government of India, 
in connection with which many of the largest ques- 
tions of military organisation were, or could have 
been, raised anew or again. In a published despatch, 
the tactful and skilful character of which met with 
general approval, he amended the draft rules so as 
to provide that all matters before they reached the 
Commander-in-Chief, or member in charge of the 
Army Department, should pass through the Secre- 
tary to the Government of India in the Army Depart- 
ment. He went far to neutralise the serious effect 
upon India of this struggle and of its result, by 
safeguarding the fundamental principle that the 
Government of India in all its branches, aspects, 
and divisions, subject to the statutory powers of 
the Secretary of State, has been solemnly and delib- 
erately confided by Parliament to the Governor- 
General in Council. That is to say that the army 
was no exception in this behalf. 

Space will not allow of any detailed history of 
the army of India under the East India Company, 

53 



INDIA 

of the armies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, 
and of the present unified Indian army. The first 
began with the enrolment of sepoys in 1784 in Madras 
by Major Stringer Lawrence, in order to enable us 
to fight the French, who in 1748 had captured the 
southern capital. Each Presidency army was orig- 
inally separate and distinct, and it was the military 
genius of Robert Clive which made the native troops 
into good soldiers, and enlisted all the likely material 
which came to hand. The extension of the Com- 
pany's rule after Plassey was accompanied by cor- 
responding development in the military forces. In 
1764 the Bengal sepoys mutinied for higher pay, and 
in 1768 the European officers conspired because 
camp allowances in cantonment were stopped. The 
armies of native princes at this period were of huge 
dimensions, of little cohesion, and of less training. 
The Mahratta forces, which enjoyed great mobility 
and powers of endurance, were, however, organised 
by Sivaji into formidable foes, but even they were 
hardly professional soldiers, like the Sikhs, who, 
after the dissolution of their army, returned to the 
plough but have ever since supplied us with soldiers, 
than whom there are no better, serving any Power. 
The Presidency armies, after frequent trials of 
strength with loosely organised native levies, were 
themselves reorganised in 1796, after which, and in 
1805, further vast territories were annexed, so that 
after the third Mahratta War the three Presidential 
armies consisted of 24,500 British and 130,000 
native troops. Then in 1806 occurred the mutiny 

54 



LATER HISTORY 

at Vellore, and afterwards Madras European oflScers 
in turn conspired for higher pay. 

In 1824 there was another reorganisation, and in 
1846 local corps, such as the Corps of Guides, and 
the Punjaub Irregular Forces, were enrolled for 
duty on the frontier. On the eve of the Mutiny, 
the army consisted of 39,500 British and 311,000 
native troops, the latter out-numbering the former 
by nearly eight to one. During the great crisis the 
Punjaub frontier force, the Hyderabad contingent, 
and the Madras and Bombay armies remained loyal, 
and it is believed that dislike of the mutinous 
Bengal army, which finds an echo in the distrust 
with which the natives of other provinces regard 
Bengali pretensions at the present day, was at 
least one of the factors making for loyalty elsewhere. 
It is the opinion of an able writer in the Imperial 
Gazetteer of India, General Sir Edwin CoUen, that 
among the causes of the Mutiny were measures 
political, domestic, and military, which were car- 
ried out to satisfy the craving for improvement 
according to Western ideals, and if this were so in 
1857, it is certainly not less so half a century later, 
when the outcry of a few denationalised extremists 
is accepted far too readily in many quarters as the 
voice of India. Not a fluent Bengali, who has 
broken with all the ideals and habits of his own 
country, and is regarded by the Hindoo masses 
with dislike and suspicion, but will prate about 
representative government, improvement, and 
progress to willing and easily deluded ears in this 

55 



INDIA 

country. Of course the annexation of Oudh was a 
great predisposing cause, and then again the Gov- 
ernment of India proceeded upon the assumption 
that an administration which violated the received 
ideals of Western government must necessarily 
have been odious to the native population. There 
is very little proof, however, that this was the 
case, and it is quite certain that some of the very 
features of our rule of which we are most proud are 
those which are particularly unpopular with the 
natives. Brahmins thought they saw signs of the 
destruction of their influience in the suppression of 
suttee, and the legal remarriage granted to Hindoo 
widows, and of course the substance used for lubri- 
cating the cartridges was made of animal fat. It 
is a singular circumstance that, in spite of this, 
cotton goods for India continue to be sized with 
some such substance, though it is believed that 
a vegetable substitute might easily be devised. In 
1907 a Bengali agitator addressed a meeting at 
Assansole saying that sugar was refined with pigs' 
and cows' blood. It is also notorious that British 
oflScers in India are less in touch with the natives 
than they were formerly. Many indeed are wholly 
dependent upon interpreters who fasten like leeches 
upon men in authority and carefully keep all infor- 
mation from their ears, and this is true not merely 
of such travellers as are only too willing to believe 
evil of their fellow-countrymen, but even of well- 
disposed and moderate men who are like clay in 
the hands of the potter when they fall into the 

56 



LATER HISTORY 

clutches of astute and intriguing Babus, with axes 
to grind. Meanwhile, so little does the native of 
the country agree with the said Babu, that he would 
exclaim with the old Pindari: 

"I had rather be robbed by a tall man who showed 
me a yard of steel, 
Than fleeced by a sneaking babu with a belted knave 
at his heel." ^ 

One predisposing cause towards the Mutiny in 
the opinion of good soldiers was the diminution in 
authority of the commanding officers, another was 
the all-pervading and all-powerful influence of the 
Brahmins in the Bengal army. Yet at the present 
moment an agitation is proceeding in India which 
is entirely caused by, and restricted to. Brahmins 
and other high castes in sympathy with them, who 
even now have an immense and preponderating 
influence in the government of the country, but 
would fain be rid of the impartial supervision of 
British officers, who refuse to let them plant their 
heels upon the necks of the lower castes and classes. 
Again, disaster in Afghanistan had broken the charm 
of invincibility, which had previously attached to 
our arms, just as at the present moment the prick- 
ing by Japan of the Russian bubble, which we had 
always shown an obvious reluctance to try to prick, 
has undoubtedly impaired the belief of the East in 
the natural and inevitable superiority of Western 
over Eastern arms; and just before the Mutiny, 
stories were in circulation in India about our diffi- 
culties in the Crimea, which had their counterpart 

57 



INDIA 

quite recently in the alarmist rumours regarding our 
position in South Africa, nor was the existence of 
secret agents, conspiring against the Government 
and endeavouring to debauch the Sepoys, wanting 
then, nor is it lacking at the present day. Nothing 
indeed was necessary to cause the unrest, which is 
now happily subsiding, to break out into overt acts 
of hostility but weakness and vacillation in high 
places, of which fortunately there has been none. 
Mr. Morley has said that patience and firmness are 
the watchwords of the present situation, and he has 
shown himself not only able to formulate the right 
policy, but to carry it into effect. Fortunately, 
there is no doubt at all about the loyalty of the 
sepoys at the present moment. Indeed, they treated 
the overtures of the agitators with the utmost con- 
tempt. None the less has the situation recently 
been one which cannot but inspire with grave mis- 
givings those who are familiar with Indian conditions, 
and all must unite in thanking Heaven that the crisis 
found a statesman at the helm. After the Mutiny, 
the European army of the East India Company was 
transferred to the Crown, and a Royal Commission 
advised that the European forces should be 80,000 
strong and that the Indian troops should not exceed 
them by more than two to one in Bengal, and three 
to one in Madras and Bombay, recommendations 
which were adopted, and remain in force to the 
present day. The British troops serving in India 
are lent to, and paid for by, the Indian Govern- 
ment, from which a capitation grant of £7 10s. has 

58 



LATER HISTORY 

been levied since 1890. This represents the cost of 
enlisting and training the recruit, and certain other 
charges, but Sir Henry Brackenbury and four other 
members of the Indian Expenditure Commission 
thought that no charge should be made on this 
account. Differences of opinion between the Home 
and Indian Governments regarding allocation of 
the charges have frequently been, and still are, 
under consideration. In 1893 Parliament passed 
an act abolishing the offices of Commander-in-Chief 
in the Madras and Bombay armies, and withdrawing 
the power of military control from the governments 
of these Presidencies. Before this measure was car- 
ried out the Bengal army had become unwieldy, 
which was bad, and tended to become homogeneous, 
which was worse, and it was decided to divide India 
into the four territorial commands of the Punjaub, 
Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, each under a lieu- 
tenant-general. It was subsequent to this date, in 
1899-1900, that India despatched the force which 
saved Natal, the British infantry having been armed 
with the Lee-Metford rifle in the previous year. 
Since 1903 the army, consisting of five commands 
since the separation of Burma from Madras, is 
made up of 74,170 British and 157,941 native 
troops, and this brings the narrative down to the 
time of Lord Kitchener, who, besides initiating the 
important administrative changes, of which a full 
account has been given above, has also commenced 
to introduce a new scheme of military organisation, 
the leading features of which are recognition of the 

59 



INDIA 

fact that the chief function of the army is the de- 
fence of the north-west frontier, and that the forces 
in time of peace should be organised and trained in 
units of command similar to those in which they will 
take the field in time of war. In pursuance of this 
policy, many small military stations are being aban- 
doned and troops concentrated in large cantonments 
in three Army Corps of ten Divisional Commands, 
each of which will supply a full division to take the 
field. Regiments are organised on the "class," or 
on the "class squadron," or "class company" system. 
The Gurkha regiments, for instance, are all Gurkhas, 
and in some cases four companies of a regiment may 
be Sikhs and four Mohammedans, and so on. Enlist- 
ment is for general service within or without British 
territory, and, if necessary, beyond the sea. The 
volunteers in India are now 34,000 strong, including 
reservists, and they may yet do, as they have done 
in the past, good work at critical times. Some of 
the native states maintain armies in addition to 
Imperial service troops, but though these levies 
number 93,000 men in all, they are not a very for- 
midable force. Nepaul has an army of 45,000 men, 
and could raise many more if needed, while the 
standing army of Afghanistan numbers from 65,000 
to 70,000 regular troops, organised more or less like 
those of the British Government, and 20,000 irregu- 
lars. All these troops are well armed, and every 
Afghan is a first-rate fighting man. 

The above brief excursus upon the army arose 
out of the differences which occurred during Lord 

60 



LATER HISTORY 

Curzon's Viceroyalty, and in like manner it would 
be difficult to appreciate the action taken by the 
Government of the same Viceroy, during his term 
of office, which extended to nearly twice that of the 
average holder, without briefly reviewing a few of 
the more salient events in the history of education. 
Under the old Hindoo system, advanced instruc- 
tion was strictly confined to the upper castes, and 
under the Mohammedans education was inseparably 
connected with mosques and shrines. Early in the 
19th century a knowledge of English became a mar- 
ketable acquirement, and missionaries and philan- 
thropists in England and in India brought pressure 
to bear on the Government in favour of popular 
education. Two parties arose — the Anglicists and 
the Orientalists; the former contending that the 
knowledge and science of the Western world should 
be conveyed to the natives by the medium of Eng- 
lish, and the Orientalists desiring that vernacular 
education should be supplemented by the study 
of the classical languages of the East. The Angli- 
cists carried the day, led by Lord Macaulay, whose 
famous minute, which has been so frequently eulo- 
gised, in which seas of treacle and butter, and kings 
thirty feet high are held up to ridicule, is really a 
very shallow piece of writing and reasoning. It 
would be equally easy to ridicule the beautiful 
mythology of the Greeks, whose influence upon the 
development of civilisation has been unequalled, 
and it is very unlikely that Macaulay had read the 
literature he professed to despise. The consequences 

61 



INDIA 

of the decision at which the Government arrived 
have been, and will be still more, momentous, for 
it may be regarded as certain that Orientalism will 
never again have strength enough to raise its head. 
In 1854 Sir Charles Wood (Lord Halifax) directed 
the constitution in each province of departments 
of public instruction, the creation of universities 
at Presidency towns, the establishment of training 
colleges, the multiplication of vernacular schools 
for elementary education, and the introduction of a 
system of grants in aid to schools maintained by 
private bodies or persons, English being prescribed 
as the medium of instruction in the higher branches. 
From this date up to 1882 great progress was made, 
to review which, and to criticise the whole system, 
a commission was then appointed, with the result 
that the general principles of the Act of 1854 were 
reaffirmed, amended, and supplemented. 

At the end of 1902, 4,000,000 students were under 
instruction; in twenty years the number of pupils 
in primary had increased by 49 and in secondary 
schools by 180 per cent., and more than 23,000 
undergraduates and students of various professions 
were receiving instruction in 200 colleges, in spite 
of which, in 1901, only 98 per 1000 in the case of 
males, and 7 per 1000 in the case of females, were 
able to read and write. 

Burma, the native states of Travancore and 
Baroda, Madras, Bombay, and Bengal is the order 
of merit for literacy, though claims, wholly unsus- 
tainable as the Census shows, are frequently made 

62 



LATER HISTORY 

for Bengal that it is the most educated part of 
India. As a matter of fact, of the greater provinces, 
only two — the Punjaub and the United Provinces — 
occupy a lower position in the list, and it is not 
surprising that the more degraded, bloody, and 
immoral forms of Hindooism find their home in 
this province, to which fact, were proof needed, 
the writings of recent travellers and observers amply 
testify. It is not, however, only in Bengal that 
education somewhat lags behind the ideals set 
before the Government, for only one-sixth of the 
boys of school-going age were following the course 
of primary instruction in 1901-1902. Secondary 
is more developed than primary education, and a 
very valuable Resolution of the Government of 
India not long since was issued deprecating the 
undoubted sacrifice of the vernacular languages to 
English in the secondary schools. Higher education, 
such as it is, has spread far and wide, and in 1901- 
1902 nearly 15,000 students became Bachelors of 
Arts, but it was admitted by the Indian Universities 
Commission that the acquirements of Indian gradu- 
ates were in many cases inadequate and superficial. 
These youths live during their university course 
with their friends or in lodgings, with results which 
are admittedly unsatisfactory, and to remedy which 
the Indian Government is encouraging the hostel 
system. 

Education has made less way amongst the Mo- 
hammedans, and in the case of females presents, of 
course, peculiar difficulties. The proportion of girls 

63 



INDIA 

under instruction is highest in Madras, and the 
difference of the attitude towards this question in 
different provinces is illustrated by the fact that in 
Burma 74 and in Madras 52 per cent, of the girls 
at school are found in boys' schools, while in the 
Punjaub the like figure falls to one per cent. 

Space does not allow of any consideration of the 
Chief's Colleges, the technical and industrial, the 
arts, engineering, medical, agricultural, veterinary, 
and normal colleges and schools, but all are repre- 
sented in the complete and complex educational 
system of India. Everywhere the State maintains 
a position of strict religious neutrality. No religious 
instruction is given in Government schools, and pri- 
vate institutions, provided their secular education is 
satisfactory, may give instruction in any religion 
whatsoever. The all-important question of moral 
training was considered in 1887-88, and suitable 
text-books, physical training, and athletic sports 
were recommended as an antidote to the want of 
reverence, respect, and religious obedience, which 
merely secular education is said, and probably 
rightly said, to promote. Great care is taken in 
the selection of the text-books; a difficult matter 
where so many languages are spoken, but, in fact, 
the measures taken have not availed to scotch, 
much less kill, evils the existence of which cannot 
be denied. 

The educational situation called for the Viceroy's 
attention. Lord Curzon was not the man to pass 
by any nettle which needed to be grasped, and he 

64 



LATER HISTORY 

himself presided over a conference of educational 
officers which he called together to consider the 
situation. He was under no illusion as to the deli- 
cate ground on which he was treading, nor indeed 
was he mistaken as to the necessity for reform. 
He appointed a Director-General of Education, 
and a University Commission, he further legislated 
upon the University question, and he had the cour- 
age to say that the vernacular languages were being 
neglected and degraded in the pursuit of English, 
and very often bad English, for the sake of the 
mercantile value of the latter language. He made 
primary education a charge upon provincial reve- 
nues and supplemented these charges by permanent 
annual grants. He laid down tests for the official 
recognition of secondary education, and he realised 
that our higher instruction trained the memory at 
the expense of the mind. He also introduced impor- 
tant reforms into training colleges, and primary and 
industrial schools. The university legislation of his 
Government was the cause of his being overwhelmed 
with obloquy by the Babus of Bengal. Here it 
should be observed in passing that "Babu" is an 
honorific title which an educated Bengali gentle- 
man gives to himself, and if it now connotes any 
other significance, such can only be due to the chief 
characteristics of those who bear it. Five univer- 
sities, founded on the model of London University, 
as it was in the beginning, control the instruction 
given in nearly 200 colleges, which, however, were 
practically under no inspection, and in respect of 

65 



INDIA 

which no uniformity of standard or ideals were re- 
quired. It was to the interest of the weaker col- 
leges to lower the standard, nor were they checked 
in this aspiration by the governing bodies of the 
universities. The object, on the contrary, of the 
senate was to turn out the largest number of gradu- 
ates, and Lord Curzon's Commission of 1902 having 
clearly brought to light the chief defects of the sys- 
tem, the Indian Government determined to provide 
all universities with new senates, mainly composed 
of teachers, and to leave each university to frame 
its own regulations and inspect its own colleges. 
The action taken was exceedingly unpopular, partic- 
ularly with the Bengali Babus, and with the Bengali 
press which represents them in such a full-blooded 
and uncompromising fashion. 

The charge was that Lord Curzon desired to offi- 
cialise the universities, and to insist upon a standard 
of efficiency so high that it would crush the weaker 
colleges which had been found so useful to the Babu 
class in the manufacture of graduates. There is no 
reason for supposing that the reconstructed senates 
have dealt severely with the less satisfactory col- 
leges, but there is no doubt that Lord Curzon has 
been overwhelmed with obloquy for action in itself 
praiseworthy. This feeling was intensified by the 
delivery of his Convocation Address in 1905, in 
which he stated that the highest ideal of truth is to 
a great extent a Western conception, and that truth 
took a high place in the moral codes of the West 
before it had been similarly honoured in the East. 

66 



LATER HISTORY 

This comprehensive and unnecessary generalisation 
naturally gave very great offence. Every Oriental 
scholar will remember the well-known lines of Sadi : 

"Better to lie with good intent, 
Than tell the truth, if harm is meant"; 

and in the Mahabharata falsehood is said to be 
permissible in five cases — marriage, love, danger to 
life, loss of property, or the benefit of a Brahmin. 
But it is a fact that those who are accustomed to 
associate with the natives of India in other than an 
official capacity by no means accuse them of being 
generally untruthful. Indeed, the Hindoos and 
Mohammedans, apart from the atmosphere of courts 
of all sorts, may fairly be described as truthful and 
straight-dealing people. The contrary impression 
would no doubt be created upon those who had had 
all association with them through interpreters, in 
whose case the Italian proverb Traduttori traditori 
is peculiarly appropriate. 



67 



CHAPTER III 

THE LAND SYSTEM 

THE land revenue system of India, upon which, 
in recent years, many and great assaults 
have been deHvered, was not invented by 
the British, but was inherited by them, Hke so many 
other systems which form an integral part of their 
administration, from their predecessors in title. In 
a former chapter passing reference has been made 
to the fact that, in the reign of the most moderate 
of all the great Moguls, the land-tax was so regu- 
lated that nothing was left to the cultivator beyond 
what sufficed for the subsistence of himself and 
his family, together with enough seed for sowing 
next season's crop. Passing reference was also 
made to what the earliest writers on India have 
recorded on this all-important subject. That it is 
all important, no one can doubt, seeing that two- 
thirds of the people of India are engaged directly 
or indirectly in agricultural pursuits, so that if our 
land policy is bad it would be difficult, indeed, to 
claim that our administration in general was good. 
The argument that the British grind the people 
down, and that the severity of the land system has 
led to the frequency of famines, is noticed in its 

68 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

proper place, though it is in itself not worthy to be 
answered. 

Among the critics are Mr. R. C. Dutt, C.I.E., and 
others with more or less qualifications for express- 
ing opinions upon this very technical subject. From 
time immemorial the Government has been entitled 
to a certain proportion of the produce of all land, 
the rights to which have not been limited, and the 
procedure by which that proportion is determined 
is called the settlement of the land revenue. Such 
settlements are of two kinds: permanent, by which 
the demand of the State is forever fixed, and tem- 
porary, by which the State demand is revised at 
recurring periods. The permanent districts cover the 
greater part of Bengal, parts of the United Provinces 
and of Madras, and certain other isolated tracts. At 
one time, the extension of the permanent settlement 
throughout India was advocated, and critics of the 
school of which Mr. Dutt may be regarded as an 
example urged that had this policy been carried 
into effect forty years ago, India would have been 
spared the worst famine of recent years. It is held 
by the same school, and this is a most important 
plank in the Congress platform, that in consequence 
of the permanent settlement the cultivators of Ben- 
gal are more prosperous than those of any other 
part of India. If it were a fact that the cultiva- 
tors of Bengal enjoyed exceptional prosperity, there 
would, indeed, be some reason for the inference that 
the permanent settlement was the cause. But there 
is, in fact, no ground whatever for any such assertion. 

69 



INDIA 

Bengal, as a whole, and particularly the new prov- 
ince of Eastern Bengal, possesses exceptional fertil- 
ity and means of communication, a monopoly of 
the production of jute, and the possession of the 
greatest city in India as one of its capitals. Yet not 
all these advantages avail to save Bengal from serious 
drought whenever the monsoon failure reaches that 
region. Noticing earlier famines in this province, 
that of Behar in 1873-1874 cost the State 6,000,000 
sterling, while in the famine of 1897 more than three- 
quarters of a million of the population were on relief. 
A careful consideration of the history of famines 
during British administration, and of such informa- 
tion as is available on the subject in ante-British 
days, lends no support whatever to the contention 
that Bengal has been saved from famine by the per- 
manent settlement, or that its cultivators enjoyed 
any exceptional prosperity, over and above such as 
is due to the climate and geographical causes. Still 
less is there any ground for thinking that the culti- 
vators and tenants of the state-created landlords in 
Bengal enjoy, owing to the permanent settlement, 
any exceptional prosperity. On the contrary, it 
was because they were especially impoverished and 
oppressed that the Government of India was com- 
pelled, by a series of legislative measures, to place 
them in the position of greater security which they 
now enjoy. This legislation has not only no con- 
nection with the permanent settlement, but has 
been designed to confer those benefits which that 
settlement has altogether failed to secure. Absen- 

70 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

tee landlordism, unsympathetic management, bad 
relations between landlord and tenant, the multipli- 
cation of middlemen, and unhappy relations between 
owners and cultivators obtained in Bengal to a 
greater extent than elsewhere in India, and it is not 
in the land settlement, but in the new laws which 
have been passed to check these abuses, that the 
Bengal cultivator has found salvation. 

That criticism has been more generally levelled 
against the temporary settled districts is due to the 
fact that the agitation has been directed from Bengal, 
whence also the sinews of war have been provided. 
It is in no way due to the fact that conditions in such 
districts are at all inferior. Of the two sub-divisions 
of this category, the Zemindari, Malguzari, or Taluk- 
dari tenure — in which the landlord pays the revenue 
to the State, whether he cultivates himself or through 
some rent-paying tenant — obtains in the Central 
Provinces, the United Provinces, and the Punjaub. 
The Government of India has always held, and has 
led the way in holding, that in such cases a limit 
should be placed to the rent the landlord may 
demand from his tenant, and it would, indeed, be 
little less than absurd to dwell upon the necessity 
for Government taking a moderate share when it 
deals directly with the tenant, and to ignore the 
necessity for equal moderation in the demands of 
the landlord. It is equally necessary to protect the 
cultivator whether he pays rent to the Indian land- 
lord or revenue to the British Indian Government. 
In accordance with these principles, legislation has 

71 



INDIA 

proceeded in Bengal, the Central, and the United 
Provinces, with little or no co-operation in this 
behalf on the part of those who are in a position to 
assist in carrying out this policy. It has further 
been argued that where the land revenue is paid to 
the State by the landlord the demand should be 
limited, as a fixed and invariable rule, to one-half 
of his rent or assets. It has been shown that the 
ruling power has always been entitled to a share in 
the produce of the soil. Indeed, this doctrine has 
been laid down in far stronger terms by the earlier 
writers upon India, who speak of the land as belong- 
ing to the State. In the regulation of 1793, the 
Government share was fixed by estimating the rent 
paid by the tenants, deducting therefrom the cost 
of collection, allowing the landlords one-eleventh as 
their share, and appropriating the balance, or ten- 
elevenths, as the share of the State. The word 
landlord in this connection means the intermediary 
between the cultivators and the State, and the land- 
lords in the sense in which we use the term in this 
country are the holders under the permanent settle- 
ment to which reference is made above, such as the 
landlords of Bengal, who, though not the natural 
leaders of the people, have been placed in a position 
of power and pre-eminence by the action of Lord 
Cornwallis's Government. The British Government, 
however, while necessarily adopting the principle 
that it was entitled to its share of the landlord*s 
assets, began at once to moderate its severity, and 
in the middle of the last century the demand had 

72 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

been limited to two-thirds, while before the Mutiny 
it was laid down that about one-half and not two- 
thirds of the well-ascertained net assets should be 
the Government share. No Government, however, 
has any right to forego revenue the collection of 
which is conceded by immemorial custom, and by 
the universal consent of those who pay it, unless it 
can tap other sources with greater convenience to 
the tax-payer, and it need hardly be stated that of 
all countries in the world subject to a civilised and 
scientific administration of which we have knowl- 
edge India is that one in which new sources of reve- 
nue are most difficult to find, and in which the 
inhabitants, while it never enters their heads to 
question any customary payment, are most rapidly 
aroused by the imposition of any new tax. The 
Government, therefore, never bound itself to demand 
more than 50 per cent, of the actual rental of the 
land-owner, and the settlement officers, in the inter- 
ests of the people, were under an obligation to 
take into consideration any prospective increases of 
income in determining what the net assets were. 
Nevertheless, the movement has steadily progressed 
in a downward direction and prospective assets 
have been included; allowances have been made for 
improvements, for vicissitudes of seasons, and for 
local circumstances. In the Central Provinces, the 
Government inherited assessments of 75 per cent, 
from the Mahrattas, but while the amounts land- 
lords are allowed to demand from their tenants have 
been strictly limited, the amounts the Indian Gov- 

73 



INDIA 

ernment takes from the landlord have been pro- 
gressively reduced. 

The general tendency throughout temporarily set- 
tled Zemindari districts has been to reduce the 
Government share below 50 per cent, of the net 
assets, and it is not a little extraordinary that the 
Congress agitation, which is so intimately connected 
with the landlord interests, has persuaded the repre- 
sentatives of British democracy in Parliament that 
it is desirable that the Government should abandon 
the taxes to which it is entitled, which are levied 
from landlords, and spent in a great measure on the 
cultivator, the inevitable result of which would be 
that the amount remitted would have to be made 
up in some other way from the masses who are less 
able to pay. 

Turning to the temporarily settled districts in 
which the peasant proprietor prevails, the culti- 
vator paying directly to the State, the provinces 
which best illustrate this tenure are Madras, Bom- 
bay, Burma, and Assam. It has been urged by the 
critics of British rule that the Government share 
should be limited to 50 per cent, of the value of 
the net produce after liberal deductions for culti- 
vation expenses, and should not exceed one-fifth of 
the gross produce; even in those parts of the coun- 
try where, in theory, one-half of the net is assumed 
to approximate to one-third of the gross produce. 

Others contend that a definite and fixed share of 
the gross produce should be adopted as the State 
demand. Few, indeed, of those who have any per- 

74 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

sonal acquaintance with this problem would approve 
the latter recommendation, for it is exceedingly diffi- 
cult to estimate what the average produce is, de- 
pending as it does upon the industry and resources 
of the cultivator, the nature of the crop, the fertility 
of the holding, and the vicissitudes of seasons. In 
the Madras Presidency, it was found that the gross- 
produce standard favoured the more, and prejudiced 
the less, fertile districts. In that Presidency and 
elsewhere, the net produce has been valued at rates 
far below the current prices, the out-turn per acre 
has been under-estimated, and liberal deductions 
have been made for unprofitable cultivations, dis- 
tance from markets, and vicissitudes of seasons, so 
that the actual rates used for assessment are far 
below the nominal share, in some cases falling 20 
per cent, short of one-quarter, not of one-half, of 
the net produce. The one certain thing is that the 
introduction of the cast-iron system suggested by 
the critics would largely increase the burdens of the 
people, who themselves are naturally and notori- 
ously unfavourable to any rigid rule of revenue 
administration. The adoption of the gross-produce 
standard put forward as an alleviation of the culti- 
vator's burdens would lead to an all-round increase 
of assessments — indeed in Madras and the Central 
Provinces the exaction of one-fifth of the real gross 
produce would double the liabilities of the ryots. 
Turning to Bengal, the figures, which have not been 
contested, show that rents are much below one-fifth 
of the gross produce, and this proves, were proof 

75 



INDIA 

necessary, that the cultivators in Government tem- 
porarily settled estates are much better off than 
those under proprietors with permanent settlements. 
In regard to the Punjaub, grossly inaccurate state- 
ments have been circulated by those who have 
endeavoured to associate the people of this province 
with the agitation current in Bengal. In the peasant 
proprietary districts of the former province the Gov- 
ernment demand nowhere exceeds one-fifth, and is 
often far lower, going down below an eighth of the 
gross produce. The last Famine Commission, pre- 
sided over by Sir Antony MacDonnell, naturally 
paid special attention to this subject, and reported 
that the incidence of land revenue on the average 
value of the produce was less than 4 per cent, in the 
Central Provinces, 7 per cent, in Berar and most of 
the Punjaub, and in the Deccan from 7 to 8 per 
cent. Only in Gujerat, which suffered severely 
during the famine, but where the profits on cultiva- 
tion are very high, did the incidence amount to the 
20 per cent, standard which was recommended in a 
certain memorial, which led to general inquiries in 
this behalf being made. A further recommendation 
has been pressed on the Government, to the effect 
that temporarily settled districts should never be 
settled for less than thirty years, the term which 
generally obtains, though in the Punjaub a shorter 
period of twenty years is the recognised rule, while 
in very backward districts, such as Burma, Assam, 
and Sind, even shorter periods are allowed. The 
criterion is the more or less prosperous condition of 

76 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

agriculture in the particular province. Where there 
is much waste land and fluctuating cultivation, where 
communications are being improved, population 
increasing, and prices rising, postponement of reset- 
tlement may be unjust to the general tax-payer, but 
the interests of the masses invariably escape notice at 
the hands of critics who belong to the Brahmin and 
upper classes, who now administer India under our 
supervision, but who would have no objection what- 
ever to governing altogether on their own account. 
It cannot be denied that the resettlement of prov- 
inces is a serious operation, disturbing and unsettling 
the minds of the cultivators concerned, and at the 
present moment the ryots of Orissa are dreading 
a resettlement of their province, which may be 
accompanied by an enhancement of revenue. The 
Government of India is of opinion that many of 
the objections urged to revision of settlement 
have become, or are fast becoming, obsolete. The 
process is now more rapidly completed, and the 
necessary records are more elaborate, though it may 
be contended that the people are not so appreciative 
as is the Government of the changes which operate 
in this direction. The mere possibility of enhance- 
ment is not pleasant to them, and it would be good 
policy not only to extend the term in all cases to 
thirty years, but also seriously to consider once more 
whether it would not be advisable to make a perma- 
nent settlement with each individual holder. Not 
only might this prove good revenue policy in the 
end, but it would infallibly attach every single 

77 



INDIA 

peasant proprietor to the fortunes of the British 
Government, by the strongest possible tie. Nor is 
it possible to deny that the multiplication of cesses 
is regarded by the Indian cultivators as an injustice. 
They and their ancestors for thousands of years have 
paid rent or revenue, but land-cesses for furthering 
the services of Western civilisation, such as sanitation 
and education, are altogether new imposts, the 
necessity for which they do not allow, and the impo- 
sition of which they bitterly resent. An increase in 
the land revenue may be borne — 

"The sirkar cannot send the rains. 
Although it hath to levy toll, 
And barren fields and empty wains 
Are bitter to the sirkar's soul — " 

but cesses are a new and foreign thing, and hated 
accordingly. As a matter of fact the local rates are 
lower in the peasant proprietor provinces of Bombay 
and Madras than in the landlord province of Bengal, 
where they reach 6j per cent, on the rental. It may 
safely be affirmed that the average cultivator does 
not regard primary education as a proper subject for 
taxation, and he does hold with all his might that 
such taxation should be limited to objects directly 
connected with the land. These objections do not 
apply to cesses levied for the remuneration of village 
officers, such having been a charge on the community 
from time immemorial. In thus criticising the local 
cesses and rates imposed by the British Government, 
it must always be remembered that in the land- 
lord districts numerous other unauthorised village 

78 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

cesses are habitually levied, notwithstanding the 
endeavours of the Government to put an end to the 
practice — efforts in which it is in no way supported 
by its critics, the most active of whom are closely 
connected with the landlord classes. 

The principle of exempting from assessment the 
occupier's improvements has been adopted by the 
British Government, first of all the rulers of India; 
and the profit arising from such improvements has 
been secured to the cultivators in perpetuity in 
Bombay and Madras, and for lengthy periods in 
Bengal, the Punjaub, the United and the Central 
Provinces. In spite, however, of the many and 
great advances made by the British Government, 
all in the direction of leniency of assessment, it is 
well not to forget that, in the eyes of those chiefly 
concerned, the object of a new settlement is to 
increase the payments previously made, and there 
is probably no measure that would be more popular 
with the masses than a permanant settlement, not 
such a settlement as was made in Bengal, with which 
indeed no serious statesman would now propose to 
interfere, but which none the less was conducted 
upon principles which benefit the classes at the 
expense of the masses, principles the exact opposite 
of which would be adopted in any such permanent 
settlement as is contemplated in these pages. It is, 
of course, the case that the principle that the State 
has a right to a share in the produce of the land 
carries with it a claim to a share in any increment of 
the produce or value, and it might fairly be argued 

79 



INDIA 

that the State cannot be called upon to surrender 
increased values produced by the development of 
the country, the introduction of new staples, increase 
of population, or any rise in the productivity of the 
soil, due to expenditure upon irrigation and com- 
munications, incurred by the exchequer. It is, how- 
ever, an important factor in the consideration of this 
matter that two-thirds of the people of India are 
engaged in agriculture, and that active eflforts are 
being made by agitators to persuade the agricul- 
tural classes to adopt an attitude of hostility towards 
the British Government. Whether it is justifiable 
to forego a prospective increase of revenue, which 
would benefit the general tax-payer, is ordinarily a 
question to be answered in the negative, but in 
India, by such surrender, not less than two-thirds 
of the population would be immediately and im- 
mensely benefited. It is indeed true that there is 
no precedent in native rule for any step of this 
nature, but it is also true that we have since 1835 
been busily occupied in preaching a new dispen- 
sation from the West, in which Oriental customs. 
Oriental faiths, and Oriental principles of adminis- 
tration are treated with scant reverence, if not openly 
held up to ridicule of the rising generation. The 
strongest objection would be taken by the Bengali 
critics of the Government to the introduction of a 
permanent settlement with individual peasant pro- 
prietors, without a similar concession being granted 
in temporarily settled Zemindari districts, wherein 
it is diflScult to make prices the basis of assessment. 

80 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

It might, however, be urged with much weight that 
in ryot-wari, or peasant proprietary areas, the only 
ground for enhancement should be a rise in prices, 
and though the extension of this principle would 
involve the surrender of increment resulting from 
the construction of public works at the cost of the 
general tax-payer, it is by no means certain that 
such surrender would not be amply compensated by 
the general content on the part of individual pro- 
prietors, and by their greater attachment to our 
rule. 

Not only have the Bengali critics asserted that the 
land revenue assessments are excessive, but they 
have not hesitated to allege that such assessments 
have been responsible for the frequency of famine. 
Throughout the last century there has, however, 
been a progressive reduction in assessment, which 
in the second half thereof has been increasingly 
manifest, so that, if there be anything in this allega- 
tion, the famines of the earlier should have been 
more serious than those of the latter part of the 
nineteenth century. But the contention of the 
critics is that the contrary has been the case. 

Nor is there any support whatever for the assertion 
that the most highly assessed parts of India have suf- 
fered most severely, a contention disproved by the 
Famine Commission. Indeed, in the famine of 1899- 
1900 the districts most severely affected had been 
exempted from paying their increased assessments, 
and the districts that suffered most in 1896-1897 
were such as for years had known no enhance- 

81 



INDIA 

ment. A low land-tax, like the few pence an acre 
paid on unirrigated land in the Deccan, is the out- 
ward and visible sign of a poor peasantry, near 
the margin of subsistence. So fallacious is the 
inference that a low assessment means a prosperous 
peasantry. But where the land is rich, and the 
assessment light, are the people there famine-proof .^^ 
Gujerat answers this description as well as any part 
of India, and there was the pressure most severe 
in 1899-1900, when the Deccan cultivator stood up 
erect under the loss of his crops, and the compara- 
tively rich Gujerati succumbed, when the crop fail- 
ure affected 400,000 square miles, 25,000,000 of 
people in British India and 75,000,000 in native 
states, the loss in crops being equivalent to £50,- 
000,000 sterling. The Government spent upwards 
of £10,000,000 on relief, and not much more than 
2 per cent, of the population affected succumbed, 
more from privation and disease than starvation. 
Then it is asserted that the increase, only 2.42 per 
cent, of the population between 1891 and 1901, is a 
proof of far greater mortality, since between 1881 
and 1891 there was an increase of 11.2 per cent. 
But who is in a position to say that 11.2 per cent, 
is the normal rate of increase of the Indian popula- 
tion, as to which we know nothing, and have only 
two or three counts to place to our credit. The 
Central Provinces, twice desolated by the severest 
visitations, showed a fall of 8 per cent., while in ante- 
British days it would have been nothing exceptional 
had half the population, under similar circumstances, 

82 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

disappeared. In Madras, the province to which, 
in complete ignorance of the facts, the Congress 
school of critics has imputed an assessment excep- 
tionally severe, the increase in the population at 
last Census was the highest — namely, 7.4 per cent. 
To determine the normal rate of increase in India, 
excluding the results of monsoon failures, would be 
to eliminate what is a regular feature recurring at 
irregular intervals, but never known to have been 
absent from one part or another of the congeries of 
countries we call India for more than a short term 
of years. It is unfortunate that crop failure is 
invariably described as famine. Tracts in which 
there are scarcity and distress of varying degrees 
of intensity are alike called famine-stricken. The 
State, in its efforts to prevent famine laying hold 
of the people, long before acute distress prevails 
brings into operation its relief code, or rules for the 
prevention of famine, commonly called the Famine 
Code, and in any province in which these preventive 
measures are brought into force, famine is said to 
prevail. Those who think the Indian administration 
enslaves and starves the Indians are also under 
the impression that when 6,000,000, or 2 per cent, 
of the population of India, were, in 1899-1900, in 
receipt of relief, 6,000,000 were starving, instead of 
being saved from starvation, and it would be useless 
to point out that a slightly larger percentage — 2.2 
— of the population of England and Wales is annu- 
ally in receipt of aid from the State. 

It is devoutly to be hoped that this so-called 

83 



INDIA 

Famine Code will never degenerate into a Poor Law, 
from the necessity for which India is saved by the 
abounding charity of the people. Their humane and 
civilised character enables their rulers to dispense 
with a Poor Law in normal seasons, and the latter 
in turn have declared, and take no credit for declar- 
ing, that the whole resources of the State are 
available for saving the lives of the distressed. So 
successful is this policy that in 1899-1900, in the 
locality affected above all others by one of the most 
widespread scarcities ever experienced, in the Cen- 
tral Provinces, the death rate actually remained 
round about the normal figure. Among many de- 
ductions to be drawn from these visitations is the 
fact that the peasant proprietors of Madras are 
better able to pay their nominally higher assessment 
than are their brethren in Bombay to pay their 
nominally lower rate. It is pretty clear that it is 
private debts, often 50 per cent, of the value of the 
produce, which press, and not the Government 
assessment of 7 per cent, which presses so hardly 
upon the cultivator. It is, moreover, a fact, to 
which many unprejudiced observers have testified 
from personal experience, that the administration 
of famine relief has now reached such a pitch of 
perfection that, as a general rule, the workers on 
the famine relief works do not show signs of emacia- 
tion and cannot be distinguished from ordinary 
labourers. The object of the Government is to pro- 
vide them with work and food before they deteri- 
orate in condition. 

84 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

Famine photographs, which, with sinister objects, 
are circulated, are generally those of the occupants 
of the poor-houses, in which are gathered together in 
times of scarcity the waifs and strays, the halt, the 
lame, the blind, the feeble and infirm, the flotsam 
and jetsam of a teeming Oriental population. It 
is interesting to know that the periods of scarcity, 
which are held by ignorant or malevolent critics to 
prove the failure of British rule, have conclusively 
demonstrated what otherwise might be well regarded 
as open to argument — namely, the superiority of 
direct British administration to that of the protected 
native states, which, during the last great visita- 
tion, were tried and found wanting. Indeed, before 
that, in 1897-1898, the chiefs of Rajputana and Cen- 
tral India had not proved very successful in caring 
for their own distressed people. No one could 
be naturally more prone to prefer Indian adminis- 
tration under general British supervision to direct 
British administration than one who has, himself, 
had the good fortune to be British Resident in two 
conspiciously well-governed native states, and who 
has made a study of native languages, and associa- 
tion with the natives of India, the chief object 
of his long service in India. But it must be ad- 
mitted that the evidence of private and official wit- 
nesses, the reports of newspaper correspondents, and 
the Census figures, all alike testify to the immense 
superiority of our own system of relief, if, indeed, 
any system can be said to exist outside British lim- 
its. In the first place, we can redress the balance 

85 



INDIA 

by calling on a rich to feed a poor province, which 
a single financial unit cannot do. In the second 
place, the British Government has a positive genius 
for forethought and handohast, or tie and twist — 
an Indian word, meaning arrangement, but the 
inward expressiveness of which no translation can 
convey. The grim realities of actual starvation 
were almost confined in our districts to the hill 
tribes, and to the occupants of poor houses and 
relief works, which were flooded with refugees, 
already past aid, from native states. Not that the 
British Government accepts no responsibility for 
such states. It does, and laid it down as a principle 
that it could not allow the lives of thousands to be 
jeopardised by the caprice of their ruler. It is 
characteristic of a certain school of critics that Mr. 
Hyndman should have written at this period: "We 
see by looking at the great native states that our 
system is the real cause of the ruin we deplore. 
Scarcity in their case seldom deepens into famine!" 
What shall be said of the equal ignorance of those 
who glibly assert that famines were less frequent 
and less disastrous before the days of British rule. 
Indeed, it is true that fights with famine have been 
more frequent in our time, for our predecessors 
accepted these visitations as fatalities. Hindoos 
do not write history, and Mohammedan historians, 
who omitted nothing to the credit of the kings, who 
paid them for their chronicles, have not recorded 
that they made any effort to counteract the effects 
of failure of seasons. A certain amount of informa- 

86 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

tion on this subject can be gathered, however, from 
Ferishta, Babar, Tavernier, Bernier, Dow, Elphin- 
stone, and EUiott, and after a careful perusal of these 
works, and after inquiring into the subject, not only 
in India, but in other Oriental countries — such 
as Persia, China, Turkey, Japan, and Korea — I 
have gathered the impression that, generally speak- 
ing, the tax-collectors of Eastern are not more but 
less strict than those of European Governments, 
and that the enormously high assessments of former 
times in India, and elsewhere, were only possible 
because they were spasmodically and irregularly 
collected. However that may be, in 1596, under 
Akbar, such famine prevailed that cannibalism 
became general, burial was abandoned, and pesti- 
lence raged unchecked. In 1615 and 1616 there was 
another great visitation, when wild beasts dragged 
the starving villagers from their huts and devoured 
them in the streets. In Kattywar and Gujerat 
there were famines in 1559, 1631, 1647, 1681, 1686, 
1718, 1723, 1747, 1751, 1759, 1760, 1774, 1780, and 
1785. Of such severity were these visitations that, 
compared with them, the fourteen so-called famines 
which occurred between 1880 and 1897 were merely 
local scarcities. In the Central Provinces there are 
records of famines in 1771, 1803, 1818, 1819, 1825, 
1826, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1868,-and 1869. Upon these 
occasions wheat sometimes sold at 3 or 4 seers of 
two pounds, for a rupee, and rice at 2 or 3 seers a 
rupee, whereas in 1899-1900 the average prices in 
the Central Provinces, the most afflicted part of 

87 



INDIA 

India, were 15 and 14 seers respectively, and after 
the famine of 1877-1878, in that province, the culti- 
vation only decreased by 5 per cent. In the Mahab- 
harata, the great epic poem of the palmy days of 
India, written before its sacred soil had been invaded 
by Mohammedans or Europeans, a famine of twelve 
years duration is recorded, in which Brahmins were 
driven to devour dogs. Should Burma ever again 
suffer, it will, no doubt, be argued that, as in the 
case of India proper, so in regard to its newest 
province, British maladministration has reduced the 
previously prosperous people to such straits. But 
Pimenta, writing of Pegu in the sixteenth century, 
says: "The wayes and fields were full of skulls and 
bones of wretched Pagans, who were brought to 
such miserie and want, that they did eat man's 
flesh and kept publike shambles thereof. Parents 
abstained not from their children, and children de- 
voured their parents. The stronger by force preyed 
on the weaker, and if any were but skinne and bone, 
yet did they open their intrailes to fill their owne, 
and picked out their brainse. The women went 
about the streets with knives to the like butcherly 
purposes." To this day the skull famine, so called 
because the countryside was littered with skulls, is 
remembered in India. 

No doubt our Government has not always been 
successful in treating these calamities. In the earlier 
part of last century we hardly attempted the colossal 
task now so successfully achieved. In Madras in 
1833-1834, in Madras and Mysore in 1877-1878, 

88 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

and in Orissa in 1866, the mortality was very high, 
but the science of famine prevention was then in its 
infancy, and it is that science, and not famine, which 
is the invention of the British Government. The 
vernacular press often refers to India as the only 
country in the world ruled by a wealthy and civilised 
Government subject to periodical famines, but there 
was a time when these visitations were frequent in 
Europe, and the poor ate roots and acorns. These 
conditions have passed away with improved agri- 
culture, the development of commercial credit, 
removal of restrictions upon the natural course of 
trade, and the opening of increased facilities of 
transport. Yet the critics of Government, amongst 
whom in this behalf is an ex-Chief Commissioner, 
actually accuse improved communications of con- 
tributing to cause famine, and to the ruin of the 
indigenous native transport trade, and so, it is 
presumed, to the greater sujfferings of the victims 
of crop failure! Nor, in fact, have these visitations 
by any means ceased to afflict Europe. In 1891 
Russia suffered from an extremely widespread fam- 
ine, and the Czar's Government, while it did infi- 
nitely less than ours does, obtained greater credit 
owing to the feeling abstention on the part of the 
Emperor, court, and capital from all amusements 
while the people were distressed. During the last 
scarcity in the Central Provinces, in some districts 
40 per cent, of the population were on relief works, 
but it was difficult to tell that those upon relief were 
other than ordinary cultivators. Meanwhile, suffer- 

89 



INDIA 

ers flocked in their thousands from native states to 
British works, and those states lost in the last ten 
years about the same proportion of their population 
as the British districts gained. So complete and 
comprehensive is the famine relief of these days that 
the question arises to what extent the poorest should 
be fed out of taxes paid by the poor for the rich, 
and notably the landlords, who support the Con- 
gress movement, do not contribute their fair share, 
and there is no Indian middle class to be remorse- 
lessly bled by the tax-gatherer. It was possible for 
families to earn on relief works 25 per cent, more 
than the average agriculturist's income. The Com- 
missioner of the northern division of Bombay, Sir F. 
Lely, now a member of the Indian Decentralisation 
Commission, attributes the intensity of the distress 
in Gujerat to the fact that in a long period of pros- 
perity the people had acquired expensive habits and 
had become unfit to endure poverty, so little were 
they brought down to poverty by previous taxation. 
Some friendly critics maintain that a measure restrict- 
ing land alienation should be enacted for all India, 
but it will be necessary first to study the results of 
the Land Act already passed for the Punjaub, for 
such legislation reduces the cultivator's credit, and 
could probably be evaded by the money-lender. Cir- 
cumstances, moreover, differ in different provinces, 
and agrarian legislation has been by no means suc- 
cessful in the Deccan. If, again, the revenue were 
made to depend entirely on the rain, whence would 
come money in rainless years to feed the victims 

90 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

of rainlessness? Some would say by supplementing 
the finances of India by a grant from England, 
regardless of the dictum of the late Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, now Lord St. Aldwyn, that the 
finances of India are in an infinitely better condition 
than our own. The fact is that the collection of 
money in England for the Mansion House Fund 
apparently makes it impossible for the British pub- 
lic to realise that want of funds has never compelled 
the Indian Government to refuse relief to a single 
individual applying therefor, or to relax its efforts 
to force help upon the retiring and unwilling. There 
is no reason whatever why India should lose her 
most precious possession, her financial independence. 
Indeed, Lord Elgin wisely insisted that the prov- 
ince of private charity, as distinguished from state 
relief, should be unequivocally laid down before he 
undertook to receive the Mansion House money, 
which was used for such comforts and, compara- 
tively speaking, luxuries as the Government did not 
think could properly be given from public funds. 
The introduction of usury laws is also urged, but 
these, indeed, were practically adopted when the In- 
dian Contract Act was so amended as to describe the 
agriculturist as a person entitled to special protec- 
tion in his dealings with money-lenders. Irrigation of 
course has been suggested as the best of remedies, 
and various English newspapers have eloquently 
described the tens of millions of acres which should 
be rendered independent of the seasons. Little 
notice is taken of the fact that the Government of 

91 



INDIA 

India has spent 32 millions sterling upon irrigation 
works, for which capital accounts are kept, whereby 
17 J millions of acres give crops worth 34 J millions 
of pounds, and has in hand projects which will irri- 
gate further millions of acres. It is an absurd con- 
tention that while the Government has done so 
much it is responsible for famine because it does not 
further do what financial and geographical reasons 
forbid. 

So far as the mere prevention of famine goes, 
it must not be forgotten that successful irrigation 
schemes lead to a proportionate increase in the popu- 
lation, and it is impossible to suppose that the Gov- 
ernment, regardless of levels and water supply, can 
extend irrigation at a remunerative cost, to such a 
degree as to make the country independent of failure 
of the rainfall. Lord Curzon made special inqui- 
ries to discover what additional practicable projects 
could be devised, and it was proved that the field 
was of a very limited extent. The real remedy is 
to be found in the introduction of foreign capital, 
which the present agitation must necessarily scare 
away; in the development of the material resources 
of the country and the removal of the surplus 
population from the overcrowded occupation of 
agriculture. Tea and coffee planting, gold and coal 
mining, and cotton spinning should be encouraged; 
the rules and regulations which restrict enterprise 
should be still further relaxed; obstacles to the 
movement of labour, of which too many remain, 
should be abolished, the cheap supply of labour 

92 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

alongside the raw material being a great attraction 
for the capitalist of India, which, in spite of its 
admitted but exaggerated poverty, absorbs gold and 
silver to the value of upwards of £10,000,000 sterling 
per annum. Caste in no way handicaps industrial 
operations. On the contrary, it enormously facili- 
tates the organisation of labour. Agricultural dis- 
tress must still exist in a country dependent upon 
the monsoon, but in modern India there is always 
sufficient grain to eat, and the object is the creation 
of economic conditions in which the people will have 
the money with which to buy food. Nevertheless, 
so utterly is this question — like most others 
relating to India — misunderstood in England, that 
the old-world expedient of storing grain is seriously 
recommended, while what the people want is the 
money they can only get by selling what, in former 
times, was stored, because there were no communi- 
cations and no markets. As to the so-called drain, 
most of it is incurred as interest — absurdly low from 
the Indian point of view — upon capital expended 
for the benefit of that country. It is of course de- 
sirable that the amount should be kept as low as 
possible, and the heavy charges for pensions and 
non-effective services are certainly open to criticism. 
The European civil agency could, in some provinces 
at any rate, be reduced. Few English judges are 
really wanted, and the Egyptian system would serve 
as a useful model, but the one man who cannot be 
spared is the British soldier, who makes it possible 
for so few civilians to manage so many millions. 

93 



INDIA 

The secretariat could probably be reduced, for it 
can hardly be seriously contended that it is abso- 
lutely necessary that the reports of an officer getting 
2000 rupees a month should be handed on to others 
upon 3000 or 4000 rupees a month, with assistants 
at 1000 or 2000 rupees a month, before they are 
referred to a greater mandarin at 5000 or 6000 
rupees a month, who can refer the matter to a col- 
league upon the same stipend, when, if the latter 
differs with him, or if a secretary chooses, the file, 
'plena jam margine, scriptus et in tergo nee dum fimtus, 
will finally come before the head of the administra- 
tion. There is, at any rate in the old Presidencies 
of Madras and Bombay, too much secretariat rule, 
and any superfluous hands would be better occupied 
in district administration. But such savings would 
not seriously affect the situation. The Government 
of India has pointed out how imperfectly its critics 
realise the smallness of the land revenue compared 
with enormous losses resulting from the failure of 
crops. In the Central Provinces during seven years 
the loss in this behalf has been equivalent to the 
total land revenue for fifty years. It is clear that 
any reductions that could be effected in establish- 
ments, and even under the greater head of land- 
revenue demand, would never enable the community 
to withstand losses of such dimensions, nor indeed 
is it true that abatement of taxation results in 
provident saving on the part of the people. It is 
notorious, on the contrary, that the exact reverse is 
the case. Excessive leniency encourages the trans- 

94 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

fer of the soil to money-lenders, landlords, and mid- 
dlemen, who at once swallow up the profits intended 
for the cultivator. It is also established that the 
chief sufferers at famine time are not those who pay 
assessment to Government or rent to landlords but 
labourers on the land, who are not immediately 
affected by the revenue assessment. The last Fam- 
ine Commission, presided over by Sir Antony Mac- 
Donnell — than whom no Indian administrator has 
been a more active friend to the tenant farmers 
and peasant proprietors — recorded that "the pres- 
sure of land revenue is not severe, the incidence on 
the gross produce of the soil being light, and not 
such as to interfere with agricultural eflSciency in 
ordinary years, though there is a distinct need for 
leniency in adverse seasons." Whilst crop failure 
is the primary cause, there are other factors which 
cause poverty and indebtedness in India, such as 
the ever-increasing sub-divisions of holdings, due to 
land hunger, and attachment to his own locality on 
the part of the cultivator; the decline of village 
industries, rack-renting on the part of certain land- 
lords; expensive litigation, and extravagance on the 
occasion of marriage and other festivities. 

The Government of India has long had under 
consideration the desirability of a gradual and pro- 
gressive enforcement of such increases in assessments 
as it is thought desirable to effect on resettlement. 
Wherever a large enhancement is necessary, endeav- 
ours are made to spread it over a period of years, and 
this has already been arranged in several provinces, 

95 



INDIA 

but in no case can an enhancement be welcome, and 
landholders in India, perhaps more than elsewhere, 
rapidly raise their standards of living to suit their 
resources for the time being. In theory. Government 
assessments represent the sum that may fairly be 
demanded on an average of seasons, but it is assessed 
upon the assumption that the cultivator will save 
from the surplus in a good to meet the deficit in 
a bad year. This assumption, however, rests upon 
a false basis, and the rigid demand of the land reve- 
nue must add materially to the hardships of the poor. 
In tracts where great variations from the average 
produce are not frequent, this hardship may not 
be felt, but where, as so often happens, fluctuations 
are common and large, the rigid demand of a fixed 
assessment cannot be other than disastrous. In 
Madras no revenue is charged upon irrigable land, 
the produce of which has not ripened owing to fail- 
ure of the water supply, and in the Punjaub partial 
failure to ripen, from the same cause, entitles the 
cultivator to a proportionate abatement. In Burma 
and Assam unirrigated lands are exempt from pay- 
ment of assessment if left unsown, but elsewhere, 
lands dependent upon the rainfall for water pay a 
fixed and very low assessment, irrespective of their 
produce. The desirability of making collection more 
elastic in respect of these lands has frequently en- 
gaged the attention of the administration, and it 
must be admitted that an assessment varying with 
the out-turn, for such a vast area, would be difficult 
to work, would throw great power into the hands of 

96 




o 

o 



o 

« 

O 



THE LAND SYSTEM 

subordinates, and would deprive the people of the 
object they now have in saving for a rainless day. 
On the other hand, it is hopeless to expect an Indian 
cultivator to be thrifty and saving, and it is a highly 
satisfactory circumstance that the Government of 
India has declared that it is not satisfied that, in 
well-known tracts, in which the crops are liable to 
violent fluctuations, a fluctuating assessment should 
not be introduced; though any alteration in the 
assessment is in conflict with the terms of the exist- 
ing contract, by which the landholder undertakes 
the liability for loss in return for an expectation of 
profit. It may, upon the whole, be regarded as 
sufficiently proved that the permanent settlement 
is no protection whatever against famine, that 50 
per cent, of the assets is the most ever demanded 
from landlords, that the State frequently intervenes 
to protect tenants from such landlords, and to limit 
the rent they demand, and that in areas where the 
State is paid directly by the cultivator the proposal 
to fix the assessment at one-fifth of the gross pro- 
duce would always largely increase, and in several 
provinces would double, the existing Government 
demand. It may further be held to be proved that 
the policy of long-term settlements is being extended, 
that the principle of making allowance for improve- 
ments is generally in force, that the disturbance 
connected with a new settlement is diminished, and 
that over assessment is not a general or widespread 
source of poverty and indebtedness in India, and 
cannot be regarded as a cause of famine. 

97 



INDIA 

The Government of India is further prepared to 
concede more elasticity in collection, and to resort 
in a still greater degree to reduction of assessment, 
in cases of local deterioration, even where such 
reduction cannot be claimed under the terms of 
settlement. Notwithstanding, the complete answer 
which this affords to the baseless charge that the 
Indian administration grinds down the faces of the 
poor, the proposal to settle with each holder is worthy 
of the consideration of the Government, whose 
present system, however, was inherited from its 
predecessors in title, from whose practice it only 
differs in that it is infinitely more moderate and 
favourable to the cultivators concerned. 



98 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

IN accordance with the Hnes laid down for this 
work, after briefly surveying the past history 
of the country, showing the circumstances 
under which the present dispensation arose and the 
respects in which it chiefly differs from its prede- 
cessors, it is necessary to give a brief and popular 
account of the manner in which the British admin- 
istration of India works. The Hindoo system de- 
scribed in the Code of Manu is an absolute monarchy, 
and the manner in which the king passed his day, 
as laid down in the Code, is practically that adopted 
to this day by the ruling chiefs in Travancore and 
Cochin, two old-world states, which have never been 
invaded by strangers from the north, and which are 
therefore a mirror of ancient India and of great 
and exceptional interest to the student and his- 
torian. The villagers enjoyed a large measure of 
autonomy by immemorial custom, and of the various 
criticisms which have been passed upon our system 
of government none are more weighty than those 
which condemn the partial destruction of the village 
system, inevitable though that is in view of the 
extension of scientific, probably far too scientific, 
administration. Armies, the size of which is prob- 

99 



INDIA 

ably exaggerated, but which no doubt were large, 
were maintained to defend each kingdom, which 
was separated into military divisions, each division 
supporting a body of troops. The revenue consisted 
of a share in the produce of the land, taxes on com- 
merce and on shopkeepers, and a forced service of a 
day a month by all accustomed to manual labour, 
and it has already been shown that the people were, 
according to accounts given by early travellers, in 
all probability fairly contented. Under the Mogul 
administration, the revenue collector was magistrate 
and police officer as well as revenue official, and this 
system, against which an outcry is now being made 
by critics of the Congress School, has survived in 
the main to the present day. Sir Courtenay Ilbert, 
the latest writer, has divided the history of British 
India into three periods — from the beginning of the 
seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, 
when the East India Company as a trading cor- 
poration alternately coerced and cajoled the Indian 
powers and fought with its rivals the French and 
Dutch; from the middle of the eighteenth to the 
middle of the nineteenth century, in which period 
the Company acquired and consolidated its terri- 
tory, sharing its power with the Crown in progres- 
sively increasing proportions and, pari passu, being 
deprived of its mercantile functions and privileges, 
and the third period after the Mutiny of 1857, 
when the remaining powers of the Company were 
transferred to the Crown. Passing reference has 
been made to the conquests of Lord Clive, and 

100 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

during the troublous period in which Britain was at 
war with France, Holland, Spain, and America, India 
was preserved by one of the greatest men England 
has ever produced — Warren Hastings. The con- 
quests and annexations of Lords Cornwallis, Wel- 
lesley, Hastings, and Dalhousie have already been 
briefly reviewed, and subsequent to the Mutiny the 
history of India is a record of development, the only 
important territorial addition made being Upper 
Burma, acquired in 1886. It is now time, therefore, 
to explain how the present system of government 
arose, and what that system is. 

By Lord North's regulating Act of 1773 a Gover- 
nor-General and four Councillors were appointed to 
administer Bengal, and Madras and Bombay were 
placed in subordination to the former Presidency. 
By Pitt's Act of 1784 the administration of the three 
Presidencies was placed under a Governor and three 
Councillors, of whom the Commander-in-Chief was 
one, the control of the Governor-General in Council 
being maintained and extended. The Charter Act 
of 1813 withdrew the Company's monopoly except 
in regard to tea and the China trade, and the Charter 
Act of 1833 put an end to its commercial business 
and vested the entire civil, military, and legislative 
power in the Governor-General in Council. In 1836 
the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-West, 
now United, Provinces, and in 1854 that of Bengal, 
was created, the latter province till then having 
been directly administered by the Governor-General. 
The original intention was to make Bengal a Presi- 

101 



INDIA 

dency, with a Governor in Council, which forms 
the justification for a claim by the Congress party 
that this constitution should now be conceded. 
Those who support this request can hardly have 
been at the pains to learn that the Governor-in- 
Council constitution is now anomalous and unworthy 
of imitation, since it has lost all signs of independence 
other than outward pomp and the power of corre- 
sponding directly upon unimportant subjects with 
the Secretary of State. More than this, since the 
abolition of the office of provincial Commander-in- 
Chief, the Governor possesses no power beyond that 
of overriding his Council in cases of grave importance, 
which never can arise in a subordinate administra- 
tion in telegraphic communication with Calcutta, 
and, even with his casting vote, he can only equal 
two votes of his colleagues, so that he might prac- 
tically be, throughout his term of office, as powerless 
as Warren Hastings for a time was. It is far more 
likely that, in order to save the additional expense 
entailed, the old Presidencies will be reduced to Lieu- 
tenant-Governorships than that the latter adminis- 
tration will be levelled up, if indeed it be an ascent 
for a Lieutenant-Governor, all powerful in respect 
of acts within the administrative competence of his 
Government, to become a Governor, who might be 
readily reduced to a cipher in his own Council. 
That the men are so much better than the system 
is the only reason why the now three-legged con- 
stitutions of Madras and Bombay continue to work 
in an admittedly satisfactory manner. 

102 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

The transfer to the Crown in 1858 made no dif- 
ference except that the Governor-General became 
known also as Viceroy, though the title has no stat- 
utory basis, the Governor-General in Council being 
the authority responsible for the entire administra- 
tion of British India and for the control of the 
native states. Immediately under the central or 
supreme Government, known as the Government 
of India, are foreign relations, defence, taxation, 
currency, debt, tariffs, post, telegraphs, and rail- 
ways, and, subject to its control, provincial govern- 
ments are responsible for internal administration, 
the assessment and collection of the revenue, irri- 
gation, and communications. So complete is this 
control that no new appointment can be created, 
except of a very minor character, by provincial gov- 
ernments ruling over perhaps 50,000,000 of people; 
but the latter have their own budgets and the ex- 
penditure of shares of certain items of revenue raised 
within their own limits. The shares were for- 
merly assigned for periods of five years and formed 
the subject of continual controversy, but arrange- 
ments are now being made of a more permanent 
character. The larger provinces have their own leg- 
islative councils, which, however, can only deal with 
local matters, and then only with the ultimate 
approval of the Governor-General in Council. The 
latter authority deals directly with the important 
native states, though some of these — such as Pati- 
ala and Travancore — are under the political con- 
trol of the adjacent provincial administrations, an 



INDIA 

arrangement which, in regard to the latter state 
at any rate, leads insensibly, perhaps inevitably, 
to its precious individuality being impaired and 
its own admirable and indigenous systems being 
forced into correspondence with those obtaining in 
neighbouring British districts. 

The Council of the Governor-General consists of 
six ordinary members and the Commander-in-Chief, 
the Governor-General having since 1786 the power 
to override the majority of his Council in matters 
of grave importance, a power which has hardly ever 
been exercised. By the Councils Act of 1861 the 
distribution of the work of the various departments 
among the members was legalised, any act done 
under orders so passed being deemed to be the act 
of the Governor-General in Council, the members 
of which under this system fulfil the function of 
Ministers with departmental portfolios — viz., For- 
eign, Home, Revenue and Agriculture, Legislative, 
Finance, Public Works, Commerce and Industry, 
Army and Military Supply. The Governor-General 
takes the first. Revenue and Public Works are under 
another, and the remaining departments have each 
their own members. At the head of each depart- 
ment is a Secretary, whose position is somewhat 
similar to that of a Permanent Under-Secretary of 
State in England. The disposal of work by members 
is subject to reference to the Governor-General in 
cases of difference of opinion, or where the subjects 
are of exceptional importance, and the vote of the 
majority prevails when matters come before the 

104 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

collective Council at its weekly meetings. The 
Foreign Department deals with external politics 
and frontier tribes, controls the administration of 
Ajmere, the new North-West Frontier Province 
and British Beluchistan, and transacts all business 
connected with native states, which cover 770,000 
square miles, with a population of 64,000,000, but 
few of which, outside Rajputana, date from any 
earlier period than the eighteenth century and the 
chaos in which the Mogul Empire expired. Some of 
the chiefs, as, for instance, the Nizam of Hyderabad 
and the Maharaja of Travancore, coin money, tax 
their subjects, and inflict capital punishment with- 
out appeal; none have power to deal with external 
relations, or, without restrictions, with Europeans. 
The Home Office deals with general administration, 
law and justice, jails, police, education, health, and 
local government, with which the provincial govern- 
ments are immediately concerned. It also super- 
vises the ecclesiastical department, which consists of 
bishops and chaplains, but the policy of Government 
is one of the strictest religious neutrality. Mission- 
ary schools are eligible for educational grants, but 
these are solely available for secular instruction, 
and may be obtained on similar terms by schools 
of any religious denomination. The department 
of Revenue and Agriculture administers the land 
revenue and the forests, deals with famine relief, 
and organises agricultural inquiries and experiments. 
Under the care of the Finance Department are 
Imperial and Provincial finance, currency, bank- 

105 



INDIA 

ing, opium, salt, excise, stamps, assessed taxes, and 
the general supervision of the accounts of the whole 
empire. The department of Commerce and Indus- 
try was formed in 1905 to facilitate the disposal of 
questions concerning trade and manufactures, and 
a Railway Board was created at the same time to 
deal, in subordination to it, with matters relating 
to the administration of the railways of the empire. 
Post office, telegraphs, customs, statistics, shipping, 
emigration, mines, and other matters have also been 
transferred to the new Commercial member. 

The chief executive officer of the army is the 
Commander-in-Chief, under the supreme authority 
of the Governor-General in Council. The separate 
armies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay were abol- 
ished in 1895, and there are now five territorial 
divisions; the [northern, eastern, and western com- 
mands and the Burma and South India divisions. 
Up till 1906 all business connected with the army 
was transacted by the Military Department, which 
was in fact the War Office, but in that year it 
was replaced by the two departments of Army and 
Military Supply, the former of which, in charge of 
the Commander-in-Chief, deals with cantonments, 
volunteers, and all matters concerning the army, 
except stores, ordnance, remounts, medical service, 
and India marine, which are managed by the de- 
partment of Military Supply. These changes were 
effected after considerable controversy, and though 
the Viceroy of the day. Lord Curzon, reluctantly 
agreed to them he subsequently resigned office over 

106 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

the question of the officer actually to be appointed 
to the charge of Military Supply. 

British India is divided into thirteen local gov- 
ernments, two of which, Madras and Bombay, are 
Presidencies; five of which, Bengal, the United Prov- 
inces of Agra and Oudh, the Punjaub, Burma, and 
Eastern Bengal and Assam are Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernorships; four of which, the Central Provinces, 
the Andamans, Coorg, and Ajmere are Chief -Com- 
missionerships, and the new North- West Frontier 
Province and British Beluchistan. Of these local 
governments two, the North- West Frontier Prov- 
ince and the Lieutenant-Governorship of Eastern 
Bengal and Assam, were created during the vice- 
royalty of Lord Curzon, in 1901 and 1905 respectively. 
In respect of the former territorial unit so much 
controversy has arisen that it will be necessary to 
refer to the matter elsewhere, and in regard to the 
latter, though considerable differences of opinion 
existed, there is, upon the whole, a most unusual 
consensus of opinion to the effect that the step taken 
was necessary. Sir Mackworth Young, the Lieuten- 
ant-Governor of the Punjaub, from which certain 
districts were detached, disapproved of the formation 
of this territory, and of adjoining border tracts over 
which we exercised direct influence since 1892, into 
a separate administration, but he pointed out, and 
so did Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, an ex-Lieutenant- 
Governor, that when the Punjaub Government dif- 
fered with the Government of India, it was only in 
the weight the former attached to the difficulties 

107 



INDIA 

and risks inherent in some forward movement with 
which it was more impressed on account of their 
closer proximity. The Secretary of State had found 
the existing administrative conditions unsatisfactory, 
and the Lieutenant-Governor agreed that, if the 
ehmination of the Punjaub Government from trans- 
frontier control was desired, the creation of a sep- 
arate administrative unit was the best solution. 
Indeed, a series of eminent authorities had expressed 
their approval of some such scheme, and among 
them were Sir B. Frere, Sir H. Durand, Sir J. Browne, 
Sir R. Sandeman, Sir W. Lockhart, Sir C. Aitchison, 
Sir G. Chesney, Lord Lytton, Lord Lansdowne, 
and Lord Roberts, who indeed was actually desig- 
nated head of a new Frontier Province by Lord 
Lytton, when the outbreak of the Afghan War led 
to the retirement of the latter from India. The 
weighty opinion to the contrary of Lord Elgin must 
here be recorded, and further notice of this important 
question must be deferred to a chapter on frontier 
relations. 

By whatever designation known, the head of 
every local government is under the control of the 
Governor-General in Council, Lieutenant-Governors 
differing from heads of provinces, other than the two 
Presidencies, in that their charges are constituted 
under Act of Parliament. By the Indian Councils 
Acts of 1861 a legislative council may be created 
for any provinces not already possessing such, and a 
lieutenant-governor may be appointed to such prov- 
ince, and under an Act of 1854 the Governor-General 

108 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

in Council may, with the sanction of the Secretary 
of State, take any territory in British India under 
his management and provide for its administration. 
Burma and Eastern Bengal were made Lieutenant- 
Governorships under the former, and Assam in 1874, 
and the North-West Frontier Province in 1901, were 
separated from Bengal and the Punjaub respectively, 
under the latter Act. 

It is now necessary to refer to the manner in which 
the Home Government of India has grown up 
and is at present constituted. The regulating Act 
of 1773 did not materially alter the system under 
which the Court of Directors and General Court of 
Proprietors managed the business and other affairs 
of the East India Company, but in 1784 Pitt estab- 
lished the Board of Control, with power to direct 
all operations and concerns relating to the civil 
and military government of India, the President of 
this board being the political ancestor of the Sec- 
retaries of State for India, and the real effectual 
control being transferred to that officer, though 
patronage and other powers were still left with the 
Company. This system obtained till 1858, when 
the government, territories, and revenues of India 
were transferred to the Crown. Under the Act of 
that year the Secretary of State is made the con- 
stitutional adviser of the Crown, and he has the 
power of issuing orders to every officer in India, 
including the Governor-General, and of directing all 
the business relating to India, which is transacted 
in the United Kingdom. He may act without con- 

109 



INDIA 

suiting his Council in all matters in respect of which 
he is not required by statute to act as Secretary of 
State in Council, and he may withhold from his 
Council "secret" communications regarding making 
war or peace, negotiation with foreign Powers, and 
relations with native states, or such other matters 
as he may regard as urgent, but no matter for which 
the concurrence of the Council is required can be 
treated as secret or urgent, and among these are 
the making of any grant or appropriation of the 
Indian revenues. The members of the Council of 
India are appointed by the Secretary of State, and 
it meets once a week. Five members are a quorum, 
and a subdivision into committees facilitates the dis- 
posal of the business of which it disposes. At least 
nine members must have served or resided in India 
for ten years, and in practice the most distinguished 
of the retired civil servants are appointed, men whose 
presence at the India Office gives additional weight 
and authority to the decisions of the statesman who 
occupies for the time being the great office of Sec- 
retary of State. The establishment at the India 
Office is paid out of the revenues of India, but cannot 
be increased without an order in Council, which has 
to be laid before Parliament, which has supreme 
authority over India, as over all other dominions of 
the Crown. In practice, however, it only legislates 
for India, as it did in the session of 1907, when 
the political constitution requires amendment, or the 
Secretary of State needs to issue a loan. The 
revenues of India are under the control of the Gov- 

110 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

eminent of India, except that they may not be 
appHed to defraying the expenses of miHtary opera- 
tions beyond the frontier without the consent of 
both Houses, except for preventing or repeUing actual 
invasions, or upon other sudden and urgent neces- 
sity. As the Home charges, including the Secretary 
of State's salary, are defrayed from Indian reve- 
nues, they are not included in the annual estimates 
laid before Parliament, though detailed accounts of 
receipts and disbursements, and a report on the 
moral and material progress of the country, have 
to be so laid. 

As the President of the Board of Control is the 
political ancestor of the Secretary of State for India, 
so are the writers, factors, and merchants the offi- 
cial forebears of the present Indian civil servants, 
who were organised upon their present footing by 
Lord Cornwallis, after Clive and Hastings had in- 
creased their pay in order to put an end to the 
practice of supplementing it by private trade and 
other means. Nominations to this service were 
made by the directors, and in 1805 the college at 
Haileybury was established for the training of 
writers before they went to India. In 1853 this 
service, for which the principal civil offices in India 
were reserved, was thrown open to competitors, 
and in 1858 the college at Haileybury was closed. 
The age limits are from 22 to 24, and on arrival 
in India every civil servant becomes a magistrate 
of the lowest class, and has to qualify in law and 
languages before he becomes eligible for promotion. 

Ill 



INDIA 

Among many matters concerning India misunder- 
stood in England is the extent to which the natives 
of the country are employed in its administration. 
About 1200 Englishmen are engaged in the civil 
government, and in the more or less direct control 
of 300,000,000 of people, and excluding 864 civil 
charges which are held by members of the Indian 
Civil Service, and excluding all posts of minor 
importance held by natives, there are 3,700 persons 
holding oflfice in the superior branches of the execu- 
tive and judicial services, of whom only 100 are 
Europeans. The natives manage most of the busi- 
ness connected with the land, dispose of most of 
the magisterial business, and perform nearly all the 
civil judicial work throughout the empire. Sir John 
Strachey pointed out that, except in England, there 
is no country in Europe in which judicial and ex- 
ecutive officers receive such large salaries as are 
given in the higher ranks of the native civil service. 
Appointments made in India carrying a salary of £31 
a month and upwards are reserved for Indians, and 
under an Act of Parliament of 1870 selected natives 
are eligible for any of the offices formerly reserved 
for the Indian Civil Service. At present the public 
service is divided into the Indian Civil Service, 
recruited in England, and the provincial and subor- 
dinate services, recruited in India from amongst 
natives of India, and the members of the provincial 
services enjoy all important executive, judicial, and 
administrative appointments which are not held by 
the smaller Indian Civil Service recruited at home. 

112 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

They are also eligible for oflSces hitherto reserved 
for the Indian Civil Service, and in the discharge 
of their functions, and more particularly their judi- 
cial functions, they have shown conspicuous abil- 
ity. Of the eight great provinces of India, Bengal, 
with upwards of 50,000,000, is the most populous, 
though the United Provinces, with 48,000,000, run 
it close. Burma, with 170,000 square miles, is the 
most extensive province, followed by Bengal with 
151,000 and Madras with 142,000. Burma is as 
big as Sweden; the United Provinces contain more 
inhabitants than Austria-Hungary, and the popula- 
tion of Madras and the area of Bombay are about 
the same as the population and area of the United 
Kingdom. British India is divided into 250 dis- 
tricts, the average size being three-quarters of that 
of Yorkshire, and the average number of inhabi- 
tants more than half the population of that county. 
The head of the district, the Collector and Magis- 
trate, is the representative of Government and the 
principal revenue and magisterial officer. He per- 
forms all duties connected with the land and land 
revenue and has general control over or co-operates 
with special officers in the management of the police, 
public works, forests, gaol, sanitation, and education, 
besides being responsible for the guidance of munici- 
pal and district boards, for the peace of his district, 
and for the administration of the Famine Code in 
times of scarcity. He is assisted by subordinate 
civil officers, by a superintendent of police, and a 
civil surgeon. There are also similar sub-district 

113 



INDIA 

units, in charge of native officers, who administer, 
very satisfactorily, charges varying from 400 to 
600 square miles. Below them again are the vil- 
lage officers, headman, accountant, watchman, and 
so on. The judicial administration consists of the 
High Court, the District and Session Courts, the 
Court of the District Magistrate and his assistants, 
and the Courts of the Subordinate Magistrates, 
while there are also Courts of District Munsifs and 
Subordinate Judges Courts, both of which only try 
civil cases. The law administered is Hindoo, founded 
upon the Institutes of Manu, Mohammedan, based 
on the Koran, and customary, which is greater than 
the other two, but the growth and development of 
which has been somewhat checked by the more or 
less rigid adherence of our courts to written Hindoo 
and Mohammedan law. 

The idea of territorial as opposed to personal law 
is of modern and European origin. It has always 
been assumed that the English brought their own 
legal system with them, so that in 1726 their com- 
mon law was introduced into the three Presidency 
towns. In 1780 the Declaratory Act laid it down 
that Hindoo and Mohammedan laws were to be 
applied to Hindoos and Mohammedans, a principle 
which was incorporated into subsequent Acts, though 
the influence of Western jurisdiction has necessarily 
largely leavened the corpus juris administered in 
India. It is, however, clearly established that no Act 
of Parliament passed subsequently to 1726 applies to 
any part of British India unless expressly extended 

114 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

thereto. Brief reference has already been made to 
the creation and constitution of the Legislative 
Councils, and in 1892, by the Indian Council Act, 
the supreme and local councils were enlarged, the 
elective element was tentatively introduced, and 
provisions were made for discussion of the Budget. 
The Indian Statute Book contains several enact- 
ments enabling the executive, in times of trouble, to 
suspend the regular law and supersede the ordinary 
course of justice. By the Act of 1892, to which 
reference is made above, the Governor-General must 
summon additional members for the purpose of 
legislation, not less than ten and not more than six- 
teen in number, one-half of whom must be, and more 
than one-half of whom usually are, non-officials. 
The nominations to five seats are made on the recom- 
mendation of members of the legislative councils at 
Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, and Allahabad, and of 
the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce. At present it 
generally happens that, of twenty-four members of 
the Council sitting to make laws and regulations, 
one-third are natives of India, but by reason of 
the permanent official element provided by the 
ordinary members, the Government majority is 
assured. Ample opportunity is given for the expres- 
sion of the views of the public, and opinions are 
invited broadcast before any legislation is effected. 
Members have the privilege of asking questions 
and discussing the Budget, but cannot propose 
resolutions, or on the latter occasion divide the 
Council. Every measure passed requires the Gov- 

115 



INDIA 

ernor-General's consent and may be disallowed by 
the Sovereign. Nor has the Council authority to 
repeal or alter the Army Act or any enactment 
enabling the Secretary of State to raise money in 
the United Kingdom. It possesses, however, power 
to make laws binding native Indian subjects any- 
where, for European British subjects, and for serv- 
ants of the Government in India in the native states, 
and for native officers and soldiers, wherever they 
are serving. In like manner the Legislative Council 
of local governments consists, besides the members 
of the Executive Council, of not less than eight, 
and not more than twenty, other members, of whom 
at least haK are non-official. In the four great prov- 
inces of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the United 
Provinces some of these members are appointed on 
the recommendations of groups of district boards, 
universities, chambers of commerce, and the like 
bodies. Codification of law in India has been car- 
ried a long way on the road to perfection, since 
Lord Macaulay, the first law member of the Gov- 
ernor-General's Council and the moving spirit on 
the Indian Law Commission, drafted the Penal Code. 
Other commissions followed, but the work is now 
done by Government, under the guidance of the law 
members, and codification, always useful, is particu- 
larly valuable in a country in which the judges 
and magistrates are not generally professional law- 
yers. European officers and soldiers remain subject 
to military law, but native troops are governed 
by the Indian enactments in that behalf. In native 

116 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

states, as a rule, laws are passed by the ruling chief, 
with the advice and approval of the political offi- 
cers representing the British Government, to which, 
however, various rights are reserved arising out of 
the fact that, for international purposes, native 
states are regarded as part of the British Empire. 
Under the Indian High Courts Act of 1861 the 
Crown was empowered to establish High Courts 
for Bengal, Madras, Bombay, and (later) the United 
Provinces; the judges were to be appointed by the 
Crown, and at least a third of their number were 
to be barristers. Every province is divided into 
Sessions divisions, presided over by the Sessions 
judge, for whose sentence of death confirmation is 
required from the highest Court of Criminal Appeal. 
After the Sessions Courts come those of the magis- 
trates of different classes, and elaborate arrangements 
are made for the right of appeal and for revision. 
Civil suits are never tried by jury in India, but by 
the District Judge, Subordinate Judge, or Munsifs 
and Courts of Small Causes. The civil courts of the 
grades below that of district judge are almost entirely 
presided over by natives of India, while eight Indians 
occupy seats on the benches of the High Court and 
two are judges of the Chief Court of the Punjaub. 
An appeal from the High Court in civil and certain 
criminal cases lies to the Judicial Committee of the 
Privy Council. Civil courts are generally excluded 
from adjudication of matters relating to the assess- 
ment and collection of the land revenue, which are 
for the most part disposed of by the collectors, sit- 

117 



INDIA 

ting as revenue courts. Considerable criticism is at 
present levelled at the combination in the person of 
one oflScer of the functions of collector and magis- 
trate. It may be safely stated, however, that this 
system, which was inherited, as has been observed 
above, from our predecessors in title, is by no means 
unpopular with the masses, and that they do not 
desire that separation of these functions which is 
in fact the rule only in the most advanced Western 
countries. In the dearth of more serious causes of 
complaint this separation is one of the planks of 
the Congress platform, and since it is quite evident 
that in the hands of a corrupt or tyrannical oflScer 
such powers might be abused, it is hardly necessary 
here to repeat the arguments which are annually 
brought forward in favour of separation, a reform 
which is indeed now under the consideration of the 
Government of India. It may, however, be remarked 
that district magistrates try very few cases; that 
appeals from the decisions of their subordinate 
magistrates do not lie to them; that the creation of 
stipendiary magistrates for the disposal of criminal 
cases only throughout the country would cost a 
great deal of money; that the English educated 
classes who expect to be, and would be, appointed 
to these offices would naturally and necessarily be 
gainers by the change, and that there is every rea- 
son to believe that the masses of the people would 
prefer that the present system, which provides for 
disposal or revision by European magistrates, should 
be continued. 

118 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

It is notorious that the people cry out for adjudi- 
cation by British magistrates wherever possible, and 
consider them more trustworthy and impartial then 
their own fellow-countrymen. The exclusive juris- 
diction over Europeans on the part of the Crown 
Courts and the independence of all other tribunals, 
formerly claimed for them, have now disappeared. 
European British subjects may only, however, be 
arraigned before a judge or magistrate who is a 
Justice of the Peace, and when tried before a dis- 
trict magistrate, sessional court, or high court, can 
claim a jury of which not less than half the mem- 
bers must be Europeans or Americans. Otherwise 
Europeans and Indians are subject to the same 
criminal and civil jurisdiction. Among the punish- 
ments authorised is whipping, in the case of males, 
for theft and certain other offences, and, in spite of 
objections raised by humanitarian societies, this 
short and sudden remedy is by no means unpopular 
amongst a people whose ancestors before the advent 
of British rule were subject to mutilation as well as 
to death, imprisonment, and fine. In describing the 
general features of the administration of India, noth- 
ing was said regarding local and municipal gov- 
ernment, a subject of too great importance to be 
disregarded. Villages may be divided into the joint 
or landlord village, the type prevailing in the United 
Provinces, Frontier Province, and the Punjaub, 
and the individual or ryot wari village, which pre- 
vails outside Northern India, where the revenue is 
assessed on the individual cultivator, and wherein 

119 



INDIA 

there is no joint responsibility. In both cases the 
usual staff of village officers exists, and the artisans 
and traders necessary for a self-sufficing unit. The 
Indian village is still an important factor in the 
administration, and the headman, accountant, and 
watchman have special functions to perform in con- 
nection with the collection of the revenue and the 
maintenance of law and order. But under Hindoo 
and Mohammedan government no system grew 
up in the villages, corresponding with that which 
is usual in Europe. Representation has always 
been altogether foreign to the Hindoo genius, and 
the management of villages and of towns resided 
not in representatives of the people, but in tax-col- 
lectors, police officers, and other officials. In the 
days of Akbar, the Kotwal, who was the chief author- 
ity in magisterial, police, and fiscal matters, was 
directed "not to suffer women to be burnt against 
their will, nor a criminal deserving of death to be 
impaled, to allot separate quarters to butchers, 
hunters of animals, sweepers, and washers of the 
dead, and to restrain men from associating with such 
stony-hearted and gloomy dispositioned creatures. 
He was to amputate the hand of any man who was 
the pot companion of the executioner, and the finger 
of such as held communication with his family." 
Such directions as these, however, from the Ain-i- 
akbari can hardly be regarded as relating to muni- 
cipal administration, and that system is in fact a 
British exotic. True it was introduced in 1687 into 
Madras city after a pattern which then obtained, 

120 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

and still obtains, in London, but the people, then as 
now, abhorred the taxes levied for sanitary services. 
Nevertheless, the municipalities have continued to 
exist in the Presidency towns, and the elective sys- 
tem was introduced into them between 1872 and 
1878. District municipalities were first attempted 
in 1842, based upon the voluntary principle, which 
naturally failed amongst a people who have ever 
been, and are now, hostile to the whole principle 
of local self-government. 

The law in this behalf was from time to time 
altered and strengthened, and the election of munici- 
pal commissioners was made permissive. Lord Mayo 
went further, but it was reserved to Lord Ripon to 
make a great and general advance. He regarded the 
elective system as a means of political and popular 
education, and widely extended its bounds, and he 
gave towns power to elect non-official chairmen in 
place of the executive officers. At the same time, 
municipal revenues were relieved of the maintenance 
of the police, on condition that they incurred equiva- 
lent expenditure on education, medical relief, and 
local public works. Lord Ripon's system practically 
remains in force, and in 1901 there were 742 district 
municipalities in the empire, in the great majority 
of which some of the members are elected, and some 
nominated by the local government. 

The elected members vary in number, from one 
half in Bombay to three-quarters in the United 
Provinces and Madras, and not more than a quarter 
of the members of the committee may be salaried 

121 



INDIA 

officers of Government in Madras, Bombay, and 
Bengal, while considerable powers of control are in 
all cases reserved to Government and its officers. 
About two-thirds of the aggregate municipal income 
is derived from taxation, and the remainder from 
other sources, including Government contributions. 
It may safely be stated that the only tax levied by 
municipalities which is not exceedingly unpopular 
is one to which, in the eyes of European economists, 
particular objection attaches — the octroi, to which 
the people have no particular objection, because 
they regard it as identical with the town or transit 
duties which were levied under Indian rule. The 
administration of Calcutta, by its municipality, has 
been a constant source of anxiety to the Government, 
though it would be unjust to regard it as a failure 
in view of the great difficulties with which it had 
to contend. In 1899 the number of commissioners 
was reduced from 75 to 50, of whom 25 are elected, 
15 are appointed by the local government, 4 
by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, and other 
native associations, and 2 by the Commissioners 
of the Port, and the action of Government, though 
called for by the imminence of plague, was resented 
by the advanced politicians of Bengal as interfer- 
ence with popular government. The development 
of local institutions in rural areas has been accom- 
plished through the agency of local boards, which in 
the beginning, like municipalities, partook of a vol- 
untary character. 

In 1871 acts were passed in every province divid- 

122 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

ing the country into local fund circles, and creating 
consultation boards nominated by the Government, 
with the Collector as president. Local taxation 
was now introduced, and in 1882 Lord Ripon replaced 
the local committee by a network of boards, on which 
the non-official element preponderated, and the 
elective principle was recognised in the same way as 
in municipalities, but the degree to which this sys- 
tem has been introduced is not constant, but varies 
in different provinces. Provincial rates yield 60 
per cent, of the income of local boards, and of these 
the land-cess is the most important. 

Although the extension of local self-government 
has always been regarded in some quarters as a 
stepping-stone of the progress towards an ill-defined 
and indefinite goal, before reaching which the inhab- 
itants of India must have entirely changed their 
character and outlook, yet it must be admitted that 
it is almost the most unpopular of all branches of 
our administrative activities. 

The writer would confess that, for his part, he 
found on all sides nothing but discontent with the 
taxation imposed for this purpose, and dissatisfac- 
tion with the result. These feelings do not extend 
by any means to the lawyer class, who almost invari- 
ably acquire power and influence upon such boards, 
but the aristocracy, and the masses of the people, 
whose feelings such aristocracy pretty faithfully 
represents, have no hesitation in expressing to any 
European with whom they are on terms of friend- 
ship their dislike and distrust of the whole business, 

123 



INDIA 

and particularly of that very representative prin- 
ciple which is regarded as its glory by its founders 
and admirers. OiBBcers of the Government rarely 
place themselves in communication at first hand with 
the people, other than with those who have been 
denationalised by Western education, and who take 
care in every district to form a camarilla, through 
which alone information reaches the English ojQBcer, 
who cannot, without a knowledge of the native 
languages, and considerable originality and deter- 
mination of character, break loose from his bonds. 
It is only by incurring the absolute enmity of the 
class which is known in Bengal as the Babus, and 
exists to some extent in every province, that the 
English official can associate at all with those who 
represent ninety-nine in one hundred of the popula- 
tion of his charge. So difficult is it to perform this 
feat, so absolutely necessary is it to the success of 
the intrigues of the Babu class to prevent communi- 
cation between the people and their rulers, that 
slanders are widely circulated concerning the official 
who would seek the truth, and efforts, by no means 
always unsuccessful, are freely made to damage him 
with his superiors, by means of anonymous charges, 
in the concoction of which the writers and agita- 
tors of India are extremely adept. There is no 
feature of local self-government which is so thor- 
oughly unpopular as the representative principle. 
No man of any position amongst his countrymen 
will submit himself, at any rate in rural districts, 
to the ordeal of election, or the chance of having to 

124 



THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA 

accept as his colleagues persons of low caste and 
slight consideration. There is, too, an indisposition 
to accept the vexatious and exacting requirements 
of public life, and little doubt exists that the inhabit- 
ants of the districts, if they could be polled, would, 
by enormous majorities, vote for leaving all admin- 
istrative business in the hands of the impartial and 
professional administrator who represents the British 
Government and is their local providence. Another 
branch of the administration which is subject to 
perpetual criticism on the part of the Babu class 
is the police — not the village police, but the regular 
established force, working under Government. In 
1902 Lord Curzon's Government appointed a com- 
mission to inquire into the police administration, a 
measure which is held by very competent authorities 
to have conduced in no small degree to that want of 
respect for authority, that disposition to disaffec- 
tion, and that spirit of unrest which has of late been 
only too conspicuous in Eastern Bengal, and which 
spread, not without active assistance from the agi- 
tators of Calcutta, to other parts of India, and 
particularly to certain districts in the Punjaub. 



125 



CHAPTER V 
REVENUES AND TAXATION 

IT is doubtful if any country in the world can 
show such an advance in prosperity as can Brit- 
ish India during the sixty years ending with 
the year 1900, in which the total value of imports 
and exports has risen from 28 to 246 crores ^ of rupees, 
and the gross revenue from 21 to 113 crores. The 
expenditure has increased pari passu, as salaries have 
been raised in amount and increased in number, 
public instruction and medical relief have been organ- 
ised, and vast sums have been spent in irrigation, 
railways, post office, telegraphs, and sanitation. It 
is claimed in behalf of the Government that the 
growth in the revenue is due to increasing prosperity 
and better management, and not to increasing bur- 
dens on the tax-payer, and, as shown in the chapter 
on land revenue, this contention may be considered 
to be fairly sustained. In regard, however, to local 
cesses and rates, it is doubtful if the people who pay 
would complacently accept the position taken up by 
their rulers, and whether they would not prefer to 
be without some of the services of Western civilisa- 
tion and to retain some of the money collected from 

* A crore of rupees is £666,666. 

126 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

them on this account, either to keep it in their own 
pockets, bury it underground, or to spend it accord- 
ing to their own inclinations upon festivals and cere- 
monies. The comparison made with the year 1860 
in the latest official publication on this subject is 
not altogether conclusive, because sources of tax- 
ation had been tapped before that date which were 
new to the people of India. Income-tax, for instance, 
is at a lower rate than that imposed in 1860, but there 
was a time before 1860 when there was no income- 
tax at all, and it was subsequent to 1860 that the 
unpopular municipal and rural rates came into 
being. Of the total income of £85,000,000 sterling 
in 1904-1905, more than £6,000,000 were derived 
from sources other than taxation and land revenue, 
and the latter receipt, the largest of all the individ- 
ual items in Europe, would fall to the private land- 
lord. The direct taxation of the Moguls, raised 
from a much smaller population and cultivated area, 
and at a time when the purchasing power of the 
rupee was much higher, was heavier than that now 
levied by the Indian Government. One of the 
most important reforms introduced into the exist- 
ing financial system was Lord Mayo's innovation of 
making a fixed grant to each local Government for 
provincial services, and thus giving them an interest 
in effecting economies which had previously been 
wanting; but hardly had the benefit of this change 
made itself felt, when that decline commenced in 
the value of silver which so severely tried the stabil- 
ity of Indian revenues. 

127 



INDIA 

Next Lord Lytton endeavoured to obtain an 
annual surplus of Ij crores, to be applied to the 
reduction or avoidance of debt, and thus to provide 
for expenditure on famine, and in 1882 the general 
import duties were abolished, though they subse- 
quently had to be reimposed. Meanwhile exchange 
continued to fall, and a drop of a penny meant an 
addition of over a crore to the expenditure. The 
action of Russia on the Russo-Afghan frontier in 
1885, and the conquest of Upper Burma, led to 
further charges, which resulted in the necessity for 
a general tax on non-agricultural incomes in excess 
of 500 rupees per annum, and the increase of the 
salt-duty to 2 rupees 8 annas per maund of 82 pounds. 
Between 1892 and 1895 exchange fell from Is, Sd. 
to Is. Id.; in 1893 the mints were closed to the free 
coinage of silver, and the Government definitely 
adopted the policy which has led to the stable rate 
of exchange at Is. ^d. and to the practical attainment 
of a gold standard. In 1894 the general import- 
duty of 5 per cent, was reimposed, a countervailing 
excise-duty being levied on cotton goods produced 
by Indian mills. In 1900 the value of the rupee 
reached the Is. ^d. rate, and from 1895, when the 
effect of the new policy began to be fully felt, up to 
the present day financial prosperity has increased, 
though two exceptionally severe crop failures have 
occurred, and plague has fastened upon the country. 
These two famines cost sixteen and the military 
operations on the frontier of 1897-1898 accounted 
for five crores. During this period the duty on 

128 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

cotton cloth was largely reduced, cotton twist and 
yarn were exempted, and a countervailing duty was 
imposed to protect Indian sugar against the com- 
petition of bounty-fed beet sugar from Europe. In 
1902-1903 the Government remitted 2 crores of 
arrears of land revenue which had accrued in the 
famine, and in 1903-1904 the salt-tax was reduced 
from 2| to 2 rupees per maund, and all incomes of less 
than 1000 rupees per annum were exempted from 
income-tax. In 1905-1906 the salt-tax was further 
reduced to 1| rupees, and the grants to local govern- 
ments were largely increased. The Budget for the 
current year provided for increased expenditure on 
police and education, and the local cesses levied for 
the payment of village officials were abolished — a 
welcome remission, though this is the particular 
service remunerated by local cesses, to which the 
payers have the least objection. Of the gross reve- 
nue of British India about 26 per cent, is raised from 
taxes proper, as against about 83 per cent, in the 
United Kingdom, and the land revenue forms about 
39 per cent, of the total net receipts, as against 44 
per cent, thirty years ago. 

The revenue derived from opium is obtained 
chiefly from the export of this product to China, 
where the local product has become a formidable 
competitor in spite of decrees by the Emperor for- 
bidding the use of the drug. At present, however, 
the Indian Government is under an engagement to 
gradually reduce the export, year by year, till it 
altogether ceases, provided that the Chinese Govern- 

129 



INDIA 

ment furnishes proof that the production of native 
opium has been correspondingly diminished. This 
engagement as a firm agreement is Hmited to three 
years, at the expiry of which the British Govern- 
ment will be free to reconsider the position — as 
free, that is, as that Government ever can be, when 
pressed by bodies possessing considerable interest 
with the electorate, and desiring to abolish the 
opium trade, without regard to the results to the 
Indian revenue, and whether or not the abolition 
results in any diminution of the consumption in 
China. The latest authority. Major Bruce, thinks 
the English Government could as easily abolish beer 
drinking as the Chinese Government, even if in 
earnest, could appreciably reduce the use of opium 
in China. 

There was a time when opium yielded 16, but it 
now furnishes only 7 per cent, of the total net reve- 
nue. The receipts from salt, the consumption of 
which has largely increased in recent years, amounted 
to 8 crores in the last year of the 2| rupees duty, 
when the average incidence, which now has fallen 
to about Sd.y was 5d. per head of the population. 
Under the term excise is included not only the reve- 
nue from intoxicating liquors, but also the duty on 
opium consumed in the country, where the drug is 
used chiefly as a medicine and preventive of fever. 
In malarial tracts the people are absolutely depend- 
ent upon it, and prisoners in jail from such regions 
if deprived of their dose run the risk of losing their 
lives. The use of opium has also proved highly 

130 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

beneficial to Indians in malarial parts of Africa, 
as appears from reports submitted to the Colonial 
Office. The wholesale condemnation of the use of 
this drug because of its misuse in China and else- 
where obscures the fact that it plays a very valuable 
part in the fharmacopoeia, and is a specific in regard 
to malarial diseases, from which 19 per mille of the 
people of India die, as against 2 per mille per annum 
victims of the plague, of which we hear so much 
more, because even the ingenuity of the virulent 
critics of British rule in India can hardly assert 
that malarial fevers, which have been the scourge of 
the country throughout its history, were, like plague, 
invented by the British Government, or brought 
about by the oppression and excessive taxation of 
its unhappy subjects. But post hoc propter hoc is 
good enough argument where the English in India 
are concerned. 

The customs duties are levied for revenue pur- 
poses only. They have no protective power, and 
they tend to decline in consequence of the rapid 
growth in the local production of petroleum, and the 
development of the Indian cotton trade. Of the 
stamp revenue, which amounted to 5 crores in 
1902-1903, more than one-third is collected in Bengal 
owing to the exceptionally litigious character of the 
inhabitants of that region. Of the ordinary heads 
of expenditure, the charges for civil administration 
naturally show a disposition to increase, one reason 
for which has been the grant of compensation allow- 
ances to officers of Government for the loss caused 

131 



INDIA 

to them by the fall in the value of the rupee upon 
their remittances to England. Little or no excep- 
tion could have been taken to this measure provided 
its operation had been confined to Government 
servants who had entered the service under an 
express or implied understanding that they would 
be paid in rupees at the rate of ten, or about ten, to 
the pound. But there is much reason for holding 
that to extend the concession to oflScers who joined 
the service when exchange had fallen, and was 
falling rapidly, was hardly fair to the tax-payer, 
who was in no way responsible for such fall. The 
question is one of little interest now, but it gave rise 
at the time to some acrimonious criticism, for which 
there was, it would appear, no little justification. 
The expenditure under general administration, police, 
and education shows a progressive increase, that 
for education being 83 lakhs more than in 1876- 
1877, though there will perhaps in the future be 
still further increases, in consequence of the changes 
contemplated by Lord Minto's Government. 

Under the item, political pensions, 40 lakhs 
annually are spent, and when the administration 
is accused, as it frequently is, of niggardly dealings 
with these pensioners, it should be remembered that 
the latter have been confirmed in the receipt of 
handsome stipends, whereas before, they were as a 
rule merely new and precarious occupants of the 
thrones and more or less royal cushions from which 
they or their ancestors have been deposed. Many 
of the families, who have been subjects of much 

132 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

superfluous sympathy, were of mere mushroom 
growth, and would certainly have been swept away 
but that they found salvation in the consolidation 
of British rule. 

No outline of the finances of India, however brief, 
would be in any sense complete without a reference 
to the railway system, which is destined to become 
a very large contributor towards the revenues of 
the country. In 1850 and succeeding years Eng- 
lish companies constructed eight railways, upon a 
guarantee of 5 per cent, on their total outlay with 
half the surplus profits. Without such a guarantee 
British capital would not have been attracted to 
India, where it has performed such valuable work 
for the people of the country, and where, moreover, 
capital from no other quarter was at all likely to 
have been attracted. All the old guaranteed rail- 
ways have now been purchased by the Government 
under a provision in their contracts in that behalf. 
When the system above described had been in force 
for twenty years the Government began to borrow 
money for construction. With these funds, only 
such lines were constructed as were expected to yield 
sufficient to cover the interest on the capital outlay 
within a reasonable time, and other railways required 
for protection against famine were built out of reve- 
nue. In order, however, to expedite the completion 
of the necessary programme, the aid was invoked 
of private companies, whose contracts were far 
more favourable to the State, and far less generous 
to the proprietors, than those given on a 5 per 

133 



INDIA 

cent, sterling guarantee. At the end of 1904-1905 
India was provided with 27,728 miles of railway, of 
which some 20,000 belonged to the State, and the 
capital outlay was 202 crores, of which 59 crores 
were spent on the purchase of the companies' lines. 
The result the railway account shows is that between 
1876 and 1881 there was an average net loss of 120 
lakhs, and between 1899 and 1905 an average net 
gain of 111 lakhs. There is no doubt whatever that 
in the future railways will prove a valuable source 
of revenue to the State, and they have already saved 
the lives of millions during seasons of widespread 
failure of crops. 

For forty years past officers, designated consult- 
ing engineers, had exercised supervision over com- 
panies' lines, and they were, in the case of Madras, 
Bombay, and Burma, attached to those Govern- 
ments, and in other cases directly under the Gov- 
ernment of India, which of course directly exercised 
control over guaranteed lines. After various modi- 
fications in the secretarial arrangements and in the 
agency maintained at headquarters for the conduct 
of railway business a Railway Board was created. 
After a report had been received from an officer, 
Mr. Robertson, specially deputed to examine the 
problem, it was considered that the management 
of the railway system should be entrusted to practi- 
cal railway men, less tied up in red tape than the 
Government officials previously engaged in this 
responsible duty. Accordingly, the railway branch 
of the Government of India Secretariat was abolished 

134 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

in 1905, and a Railway Board, consisting of a chair- 
man. Sir F. Upcott, and two members, one with 
English and one with Indian railway experience, 
was created to take its place. This board works 
mider the department of Commerce and Industry 
created by Lord Curzon's Government, and the care 
of irrigation and civil works, which alone now fell 
to the Public Works Department, was transferred 
with that department to the charge of the depart- 
ment of Revenue and Agriculture. Certain defects 
in this arrangement have, however, already become 
apparent, and Mr. Morley has appointed a commis- 
sion, with Sir James Mackay, the negotiator of the 
last trade treaty with China, at its head, to inquire 
into the whole subject. This commission has not 
yet reported and meanwhile important changes are 
taking place in Southern India owing to the pur- 
chase by Government of the Madras railway, an 
old 5 per cent, guaranteed line, the mileage of which 
is being distributed between the South Indian and 
Southern Mahratta narrow-gauge systems. 

The national debt of India in 1904-1905 was 
£133,000,000 sterling and 122 crores of rupees, and 
the total debt, taking both classes together, rose 
from £103,000,000 sterling in 1876 to £214,000,000 
sterling in 1905, but whereas in 1876 there was a 
charge against revenue for railways and irrigation 
works of over a crore of rupees, in 1905 these works, 
after paying all interest charges, yielded a profit of 
nearly 5 crores. In 1903-1904 Sir Edward Law, 
then Finance Minister, showed that the excess of 

135 



INDIA 

debt of assets in 1902 was only 33 crores, the whole 
Goyernment debt being shown on one, and the cap- 
italised value of railways, canals, and other com- 
mercial assets on the other side. The subject of 
military expenditure looms largely in considering 
the financial system of the British Indian Empire, 
upon which it has produced, and continues to pro- 
duce, so great an effect. The advance of Russia 
and the conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, the intro- 
duction of improvements in armament, equipment, 
land organisation in 1890, 1891, and similar improve- 
ments which have been continually effected subse- 
quent to that date; the raising of the pay of the 
native soldiers in 1895, and of the British soldiers in 
1898 and 1902; the establishment of cordite, gun 
casting, and small arms factories, redistribution and 
reorganisation; the supply of new guns and rifles, 
and the expenditure on military works, have brought 
the average figures for the quinquennial period 
1896-1897 to 1900-1901 to 23 crores, against the 
quinquennial average of 17 crores in the period 
1876-1877 to 1880-1881, and the figure for 1904- 
1905 rose to 27 crores. In spite of criticisms lev- 
elled against the military administration, which is 
further noticed elsewhere, it can hardly be seri- 
ously contended that an army of 230,000 is exces- 
sive for a vast empire, with many thousands of 
miles of land frontier, and a population approach- 
ing 300,000,000. 

Of the extraordinary expenditure of the Govern- 
ment of India, the largest item has been famine 

136 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

relief, or, as it should be called, prevention of famine, 
upon which, between 1876 and 1903, 26 crores were 
spent, while the cost of military operations during 
the same period was 22 crores. Within this time 
occurred the Afghan War of 1878, the Upper Burma 
expedition of 1885-1886, the Chitral campaign of 
1895-1896, and the Tirah and other frontier cam- 
paigns of 1897-1899, and also three great crop fail- 
ures, that of 1876-1878, in South India, and of 
1896-1897 and 1899-1900 in Upper India, the Cen- 
tral Provinces, Bombay, and other regions. 

Indian accounts are kept in three sets — those of 
the Home Government, of the Government of India, 
and of the local governments. The decentralisa- 
tion policy was initiated by Lord Mayo in 1870, and 
subsequently further developed with the intention of 
giving local governments an inducement to develop 
their resources and economise in their expenditures, 
to obviate the need for interference in the details 
of provincial administration on the part of the 
Central Government, and at the same 'time to 
maintain the unity of the finances, so that all parts 
of the administration should receive a proper share 
of the increase of revenue. 

Under the existing arrangement, the Government 
of India delegates to local governments the control 
of the expenditure on the ordinary provincial ser- 
vices, together with certain heads of revenue, or a 
proportion of certain heads of revenue, suflBcient to 
meet these charges. Thus salt, customs, opium, and 
tribute are wholly Imperial heads; stamps, excise, 

137 



INDIA 

land revenue, assessed taxes, forests, and registration 
are divided between the Imperial and provincial 
governments, and local taxes are wholly provincial. 
The Government of India entirely controls charges 
connected with foreign affairs, with the public debt, 
the army, Indian marine, and the home charges of 
the central administration. It also keeps in its own 
hands post and telegraphs, mint and railways, and 
its expenditure amounts to three times as much as 
that of all the provincial governments put together. 
The local governments have no borrowing powers, 
but fall back on the Government of India when 
their own resources are exhausted — as was the case 
in Bombay, for instance, during the last famine. It 
was very clearly laid down by Sir James Westland, 
with the approval of Lord Elgin and his colleagues, 
that the whole resources of India were at the disposal 
of the Government of India, and that local govern- 
ments were merely delegates, and exercised such 
functions as they were permitted to perform under 
the control of the central administration. Arrange- 
ments with the local governments, which formerly 
lasted five years only, have now been made of a 
more permanent character. Permanent they can 
never be made, for the financial fortunes of the 
provinces must always stand or fall with those of 
the Central Government. The changes made, how- 
ever, are in the right direction, and in future Budget 
day at Calcutta will cease to resolve itself into a 
wrangle as to which of the provincial governments 
is the milch cow of the Government of India. The 

138 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

net expenditure in England chargeable to Indian 
revenue is about £17,700,000 sterling, of which 
£6,500,000 are railway revenue account; £2,800,000, 
interest and management of debt; £1,800,000, stores; 
£1,300,000, army effective charges; £400,000, civil 
administration; £200,000, marine; £4,700,000, fur- 
lough and pension allowances of civil and military 
officers. These are the payments which are com- 
monly described by hostile critics of British admin- 
istration as the drain, or as the tribute paid to 
England. But of the £17,000,000, upwards of £11,- 
000,000 are payment on account of capital and 
materials supplied by England, and cannot properly 
be regarded as an administrative transaction. The 
charge of £4,700,000 for furlough and pension allow- 
ances stands, it must be confessed, on a different 
footing. It is of no avail to say that such a pay- 
ment is unprecedented, because the Indian Empire is 
unprecedented and no precedents can be expected, 
but, inasmuch as the salaries paid by the Indian 
Government to its servants are by no means ungen- 
erous, it may very fairly be argued that this is an 
exceptionally large amount for the Indian tax-payer 
to find for the benefit of officers who have left the 
country. To the furlough allowances no reason- 
able exception can be taken. They must necessarily 
be pitched upon a scale analogous to that of the 
salary in each individual case. But when a public 
servant enjoys good pay during the whole of his 
service, retires, and returns to his own country, 
perhaps in the prime of life, to live for many years 

139 



INDIA 

as a pensioner, it is hardly reasonable that he 
should claim to be altogether relieved of the neces- 
sity for making provision for himself after his retire- 
ment, and that a generous scale of pensions operates 
in encouragement of extravagance can hardly be 
denied. 

The class of pension often selected for adverse 
criticism is that of the Indian civil servant who 
receives £1000 a year, but it should be understood 
that, of this sum, he has subscribed an amount equal, 
as a minimum, to one-half of the whole, by compul- 
sory payments to the pension fund, and, in the case 
of an officer of long service it frequently happens 
that his payments to the provident fund would 
entitle him to a pension of this amount. There are 
indeed many public servants who draw higher pen- 
sions than £500 a year, which is the maximum 
received by the Indian civil servant from the Indian 
tax-payer. It would probably be generally admitted 
that British officers serving in India are able to 
make some provision for their old age, though the 
cost of living has largely increased, family expenses 
are exceedingly heavy, and no Indian civil servant 
who has not considerable private resources can pos- 
sibly hope, on his return to England, to take any 
part in public life, or to end his days in other 
than modest obscurity. This is a regrettable fact, 
because the sound common-sense views and experi- 
ences of this class of the unemployed are not by any 
means represented by those of their cloth, whom 
want of success and disappointment, or a naturally 

140 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

anti-English turn of mind, inspires with sufficient 
energy to push their way through to platforms 
from which to criticise their own kith and kin and 
the administration, willing and concurring agents of 
which they have apparently been for the greater 
part of their lives. However this may be, it is emi- 
nently desirable that home charges, other than those 
represented by interest upon capital and materials, 
should be kept within the lowest possible limits. 
Mr. Morley has given practical proof that he enter- 
tains this view by effecting a reduction in the salaries 
of the members of his own Council, a measure which 
has met with some adverse criticism in India. It is 
true that retired officers of the Indian Government 
who have secured employment in the city, or else- 
where, might find it difficult to accept a seat on the 
Indian Council, with the consequent loss of emol- 
ument. But on the other hand it must be remem- 
bered that a very small proportion of retired civil 
servants, of the class and age from which members 
of Council are recruited, can, or at any rate do, 
obtain, after their retirement, employment so re- 
munerated that they would incur loss of income 
by accepting a membership of Council. In the vast 
majority of cases the officers the Secretary of State 
would desire to appoint would be as ready to take 
the appointment at £1000 as at £1200 a year. Offi- 
cers who serve in administrative appointments in 
India occupy a position of power and importance 
which can hardly be realised by those who spend 
their lives in England, and it is only fair that proper 

141 



INDIA 

provision should be made for the evening of their 
days. It is, however, out of the question to attempt 
to provide theln from pubHc funds with pensions at 
all proportionate to the dignity of the appointments 
they held in India, and it is probable that, in regard 
to officers appointed in the future, terms might be 
imposed providing that in no case should any pension 
from Indian revenues exceed £500 a year, exclusive 
of such amounts as any officer may subscribe towards 
the cost of his own pension. Judges of the High 
Court appointed from England receive a pension of 
£1200 a year for less than twelve years' service in 
India — that is, £100 a year for life for every year 
spent in the country, an amount only exceeded, it is 
believed, by that paid to an ambassador who passes 
twelve years in that grade after a long life spent in 
the public service. This exceptionally large pension 
was attached to the office of High Court judge to 
induce barristers of eminence, in large practice, to 
leave this country and take up judgeships in India. 
It would be idle to ignore the fact that men of the 
class these terms were intended to attract do not 
avail themselves of the offer, and that judges of 
equal capacity, to a great extent, perhaps for the 
most part, natives of India, could be obtained on 
more favourable terms. Here, perhaps, is an oppor- 
tunity of effecting a reduction in the home charges, 
and there may be other concrete cases. Every such 
reduction will be unpopular, and will be resisted by 
the officers affected, but the critics of the home 
charges have their eyes fixed upon cases like these, 

142 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

and being, as they are for the most part, lawyers 
they fasten upon every appointment made to the 
High Court benches in India which affords any 
justification for the views they entertain. These 
appointments are not in some cases such as an 
impartial judge can consider altogether satisfactory, 
but that is only an additional reason for giving the 
fullest consideration to every complaint for which 
there appears to be any justification. The dispenser 
of patronage can only appoint men who are willing 
to go. The men the terms were intended to secure 
will not go. But that would be a good reason for 
reducing the pay, not for overpaying the men who 
will accept. 

For the rest, the great advance in revenue and 
prosperity is so obviously due to the use in the coun- 
try of British capital that it is idle to entertain the 
theory that the Empire is exploited for the benefit 
of the British capitalists, who indeed manifest a 
preference for almost any other field of investment. 
Without a Government guarantee it is at present dif- 
ficult to attract capital at all, and the action of the 
Bengali agitators, who have succeeded by intrigue 
in awakening a slight echo in the Punjaub, will not 
tend to diminish the previously existing shyness of 
the investor. 

The expenditure in England is defrayed by the 
sale of telegraphic transfers and from the sale of 
Council bills, and, as the imports of India are 
exceeded by her exports, purchasers in Europe have 
to remit the difference. With this end in view, they 

143 



INDIA 

buy bills on India from the Secretary of State, who 
pays the home charges with the proceeds, and the 
buyers send the bills to India to be cashed by 
the Government. This simple and effective system 
was subject to considerable disturbance when the 
exchange value of the rupee fell to Is. Id. in 1894- 
1895. In that year the sterling value of the bills 
paid was £15,770,000, to discharge which the Gov- 
ernment of India had to pay 28 crores of rupees, 
while at the rate prevailing in 1872 it would have 
had to pay only 16 crores, the difference of 12 crores 
being more than half the amount of the net land 
revenue, the greatest asset of the Indian Gov- 
ernment. The satisfactory condition of Indian 
finances, and the progressive improvement which has 
marked the last thirty years, are obscured by the 
use of the word famine for those periodical crop 
failures which must, and do at longer or shorter 
intervals, affect some part or another of the vast 
subcontinent of Asia dependent upon a precarious 
monsoon. If the use of this word were abandoned, 
and famine relief were called by its proper and now 
thoroughly justified name of prevention of famine, 
less heed would be paid to the foolish charges brought 
against the Government of oppression and starva- 
tion of their subjects. In fact, there is an increasing 
land revenue accompanied by a diminishing inci- 
dence on the cultivated area, and a steady rise in 
the receipts from salt, excise, customs, and income 
tax, all satisfactory proofs of developing resources. 
The latest published figures show that the value of 

144 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

exports and imports, including bullion, have risen 
from 61 and 37 crores respectively, in 1876-1877, 
to 129 and 86 crores. The number of cotton and 
jute mills has increased since 1878 from 78 to 237. 
In the same period the coal produced has been 
multiplied sevenfold, and the supply of petroleum 
has leapt in a year or two from 6,000,000 to 56,000,- 
000 of gallons. The number of joint-stock com- 
panies has more than, and their capital has nearly, 
doubled. The black cloud of falling exchange has 
disappeared, but a little cloud has appeared in the 
possible extinction of the opium revenue. It can 
only be hoped that the opinion of those who believe 
that when India ceases to supply China with opium, 
the supply in China will cease, will be justified, but 
the loss of revenue will in any case be a serious 
matter, though not such as the Government cannot 
surmount without the help of the mother country, 
to the receipt of aid from which would attach, 
whether expressed or implied, conditions which must 
impair the financial independence of India. The 
great expansion hitherto experienced in the land 
revenue cannot be maintained; indeed, if the view 
expressed in Chapter III of this volume be adopted, 
no further development can be expected. The Gov- 
ernment always welcomes any increase in the pro- 
duction in India of articles at present imported from 
Europe, albeit such increase must necessarily be 
attended with a decline in the customs revenues. 
Indeed, it has itself worked two coUieries through 
the agency of the North-Western Railway, and 

145 



INDIA 

either directly or through the agency of a subsidised 
company has produced iron and steel in Bengal. 
Svadeshi was really invented by the Government, 
which, as Lord Minto has said, welcomes its devel- 
opment, provided it be of an economic and not of a 
spurious political character. 

In connection with the finances of India it is 
necessary to refer briefly to the introduction of the 
gold standard. Under the Currency Acts of 1835 
and 1870, silver was received without limit for coin- 
age at the mints of Calcutta and Bombay, and the 
gold value of the rupee of 180 grains weight, and of 
165 grains of pure silver, depended upon the gold 
price of silver bullion. The fall in the value of 
silver, which began in 1873, not only caused great 
loss to the Government of India, in discharging its 
sterling obligations in England, but also, owing to 
frequent and violent oscillations in the rate of 
exchange, checked the flow of British capital into 
India, and disturbed the commercial and economic 
relations between the two countries It was decided, 
therefore, to introduce a gold standard, and in 1893 
the mints were closed to unrestricted coinage, and 
bullion and gold coin were received in exchange for 
rupees at the rate of Is. 4c?. to the rupee. In conse- 
quence of these measures the average rate of exchange 
for 1898-1899 had been pretty well established at 
a figure very closely approximating to Is. 4(2. In 
1899, therefore, sovereigns and half-sovereigns were 
made legal tender at Is. 4td. to the rupee, which, while 
remaining legal tender up to any amount, yet became 

146 



REVENUES AND TAXATION 

a token coin representing ys of a sovereign, though 
no sovereigns have actually been coined in India. 
Gold does not circulate freely, except in large cen- 
tres, but between 1900 and 1904 about £17,000,000 
sterling were issued in this form, most of which 
has probably been withdrawn from circulation, and 
more Indico hoarded by the possessors. Lest the 
Indian Government should at any time be unable 
to satisfy a demand for gold, by which failure 
the rate of exchange would probably be adversely 
affected, a special Gold Reserve Fund has been 
formed on which Government could draw if the 
stock in the paper currency reserves were exhausted. 
The present circulation of rupees is estimated at 
between 155 and 160 crores, or about £100,000,000. 
The banking of the country is carried on by 
institutions of the same character as those with 
which we are familiar in England, and also by 
native money-lenders who charge high, often exorbi- 
tant, rates of interest, but run risks and lend money 
where no others would, and supply capital in small 
doles for agricultural operations. They are the 
bankers of the small farmers of India, though the 
Government grants loans for improvements and for 
the purchase of seed and cattle, and makes advances 
in years of scarcity. Co-operative credit societies 
are also being introduced and encouraged by legis- 
lation, institutions of the same character as the 
agricultural banks of the continent of Europe, de- 
signed to encourage thrift, promote the accumula- 
tion of loanable capital, and reduce the interest on 

147 



INDIA 

borrowed money by a system of mutual credit. 
Post office savings banks are also encouraged, the 
amount to credit of depositors being not far short 
of £9,000,000 sterling. The Presidency banks at 
Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay are joint-stock com- 
panies regulated by an Indian Act of 1876, at which 
Government keeps a portion only of its headquarter 
balances. There are also eight exchange and eight 
local European banks, and the total capital avail- 
able for financing the larger operations of commerce 
is about £10,000,000 sterling. The Government, 
however, is the great Indian banker, which holds 
most of its own cash balances, has sole control of 
the paper currency, and through its transactions 
with the India Office controls the rate of exchange. 
The Presidency banks are, however, debarred from 
raising money in the English market, a restriction 
the removal of which has been, and even now is, 
under consideration. Mercantile opinion favours the 
view that existing banking facilities are not suf- 
ficient to deal adequately with the requirements of 
commerce, and the official opinion is that existing 
banks would suffice, if they were so managed that 
their resources would be free for the convenience 
of merchants in seasons of commercial activity. 
Whichever view may be correct it appears desirable 
that such further facilities as may be practicable 
should be afforded, and access to the London market 
might fairly be allowed to the Presidency banks. 



148 



CHAPTER VI 

NATIVE STATES 

THE census report of 1901 estimates the aggre- 
gate area of the native states at 679,392 
square miles, or 38 per cent, of the 1,776,597 
square miles which make up the Indian Empire, the 
population of which is 62,461,549, out of 294,361,056 
inhabitants of India, in which are not included the 
inhabitants of the Shan States of Burma, the Khasia 
and Jaintia Hills, Manipur and Bhutan, while the 
area and population of Nepaul have not been prop- 
erly ascertained. The native states thus comprise 
more than a third of the area and support consid- 
erably less than a quarter of the population. In 
52, 53, Victoria, cap. 63, it is provided that the 
expression India shall mean British India, together 
with any territories of any native chief under the 
suzerainty of her Majesty, exercised through the 
Governor-General, or through any officer subordi- 
nate to him. This suzerainty, in the case of 175 
states, is exercised directly by the Government of 
India, and in the case of 500 through provincial 
governments. Sir William Lee Warner explains that 
the generally accepted view is that suzerainty is 
divisible between the British Government and the 

149 



INDIA 

ruling chief, and that, of its attributes, the right to 
make war or peace and the right of foreign negotia- 
tion Hes with the Government, while the right to 
make laws and administer justice resides in the 
ruling chief. No chief can therefore be properly 
described as independent. 

By including areas left out of account by the Census 
Commissioner, but which for present purposes may 
properly be included, the area of India outside direct 
British dominion is upwards of 824,000 square miles 
and the population of 68,000,000. The size of the 
native states varies from that of Hyderabad, which 
is rather larger than Great Britain, to petty posses- 
sions of twenty square miles. The fact that in 
some parts of India, as in Bombay, native states 
are extremely numerous, amounting to 354 in num- 
ber, whereas in other parts, like Madras, there are 
only five, is accounted for by the conditions exist- 
ing at the time the British power was consolidated. 
In the south the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Nawab 
of the Carnatic, the Sultan of Mysore, and the 
Maharaja of Travancore had swept away or bound 
up into one unit many petty chiefships and small 
states before the British power was established. 
In Bombay, on the other hand, the power of the 
Peshwa had been weakened and territories were 
changing rulers up to the time when the Mahrattas 
were overthrown by the English, and the latter 
power recognised the status quo and confirmed the 
holders of the moment in their otherwise precarious 
possessions. Most of the native states, however, 

150 



NATIVE STATES 

are of modern origin, the most ancient being those 
included in Rajputana. Central India, on the 
contrary, is chiefly occupied by Mahratta chief- 
tains, who were not attracted by the deserts of the 
Rajputs. As they moved from the Mahratta coun- 
try towards Delhi, Sindhia, Holkar, and others 
settled at convenient stations on the way. 

The Nizams of Hyderabad were already practically 
independent when the Emperor fell into the hands 
of the Mahrattas, and Mysore may be regarded as 
a revival by the favour of the British of an ancient 
Hindoo principality. Travancore and Cochin are 
old-world Hindoo states, which existed, as they are 
now, before the struggle between the French and 
English in the south. The Mogul emperors had not 
been satisfied with suzerainty over the numerous 
native states which existed in their day. What 
they desired was dominion, in the quest of which 
they were led to destroy the Mohammedan king- 
doms of the Deccan, which, had they been preserved, 
might have warded off the fatal onslaught of the 
Mahrattas. The latter, in turn, simply desired to 
levy as blackmail the fourth part of the revenue of 
all weaker powers, and they evolved no real policy 
in regard to the native states before the ruin of the 
confederacy on the field of Panipat in 1761. 

In South India, warfare with the French and 
local intrigue led to the like relations with the native 
princes, but with the fall of Tippoo Sultan at Mysore, 
the Nizam and the British became united in a last- 
ing alliance. Bengal had become part of British 

151 



INDIA 

India with the grant of the Dewani or fiscal admin- 
istration in 1765, and Oudh was for a time the buffer 
state between it and the Mahrattas. The estabhsh- 
ment, by the Treaty of Bassein in 1802, of British 
influence at Poona led to war with Sindhia and 
Bhonsla, which was followed by a breach with Hol- 
kar, and subsequently with the Peshwa, and by 
the suppression of the Pindaris, at the conclusion 
of which, in 1818, Rajputana, Gwalior, Indore, and 
Nagpur were brought under the British Protectorate. 
The war of 1814-1816 left Nepaul independent as 
to its internal administration, but under the control 
of the Government of India in respect of its foreign 
relations. Sind was brought into the Company's 
net in 1843, and the year 1849 saw the annexation 
of the Punjaub. At first the British policy was 
to restore conquered territory, merely retaining suf- 
ficient for their own purposes and for the payment 
of expenses, but since the phantom Emperor fell 
under the control of the Mahrattas they ceased to 
acknowledge his authority and, in the time of Lord 
Hastings, adopted the policy of maintaining that 
the British held the suzerainty of India. Between 
1813 and the Mutiny, most of the existing treaties 
were concluded with native states, and in 1891 the 
British Government laid it down, in the case of 
Manipur, that it is its right and its duty to settle 
the succession in protected states. This did not, of 
course, imply any reaffirmation of the doctrine of 
lapse, the exercise of which is generally allowed to 
have been one of the causes of the Mutiny. It is 

152 



NATIVE STATES 

now clearly established that the rights of chiefs as 
rulers will be respected, but that the British Gov- 
ernment alone shall act for them in dealings with 
foreign powers and with other native states, that the 
inhabitants of such states are subjects of their own 
rulers, and that rulers and subjects are alike exempt 
from the laws of British India. The internal peace 
of the native estates is also secured, and they are 
forbidden to employ, without permission, subjects of 
other European nations, while their subjects, when 
outside their own territory, become practically Brit- 
ish subjects. As states which cannot make war 
on other states in the same position as themselves, 
or on foreign powers, need no army, in most treaties 
the military forces which they may maintain are 
restricted, and a provision is inserted to the effect 
that no factories may be erected for the production 
of guns and ammunition. Native states are, on the 
contrary, bound to render assistance to the Impe- 
rial forces. Since the time of Lord Dufferin several 
of the larger units have maintained Imperial ser- 
vice troops which number nearly 20,000 men in all. 
These are under the inspection of British officers, 
and when placed at the disposal of the British Gov- 
ernment are available for use in the same manner 
as British forces, though they belong to the states 
and are recruited from its subjects. They have 
already done good service in China and upon the 
north-west frontier. In spite of the internal inde- 
pendence guaranteed to the states the paramount 
authority claims and exercises the right to interfere 

153 



INDIA 

to correct serious abuses, or even to administer for 
the time being, when sufficient reason arises. Thus 
the late Gaekwar of Baroda was deposed, and other 
instances of similar action are not wanting. The 
powers of the Governor-General in native states are 
exercised through political officers, generally called 
Residents, who are the sole channel of communi- 
cation, and the political service is recruited from the 
Indian Civil Service and from the Indian army. 
Residents, however, are usually appointed to native 
states in political relations with local governments 
from their own local civil service. Officers of the 
regular political service, having had experience in 
one native state after another, better grasp the fact 
that interference in the ordinary administration is 
neither desirable nor permissible, than officers ap- 
pointed from the local civil service. The latter 
almost invariably endeavour to reproduce in the 
native states to which they are appointed the con- 
ditions of the British districts in which they them- 
selves served, and they review the administration 
of their state as if it were a Government depart- 
ment of which they were the responsible heads. 
They are prone to establish a regular system of re- 
ceiving petitions against the decisions of the officers 
of the state, and, in short, there is much ground for 
thinking that with the permission, express or implied, 
of the local government, they wittingly or unwit- 
tingly defeat the object of Government in preserving 
native states, by impairing their individuality, and, 
insensibly, their qualified independence. Even where 

154 



NATIVE STATES 

the subjects of the state are prosperous and con- 
tented, officers of the character described are far too 
ready to regard the state as a field for the exhibition 
of their own administrative powers and for the in- 
troduction of reforms. The case is still worse where 
it happens that the right of the chief to choose his 
own minister is practically taken from him, in con- 
sequence of advice tendered by the Resident or by 
the local government. There are always factions 
at these courts, one or another of which frequently 
gets the ear of the political agent, and able officers 
of the state, well fitted to become ministers to their 
Maharajas, may not be popular with the little Euro- 
pean clique at the capital. The craze for reform 
after British patterns, whether or not required, is 
such that it ever points towards the expediency of 
bringing in outsiders. The officer thus introduced, 
almost invariably a capable Brahmin, who has event- 
ually to revert to British employ and knows on which 
side his bread is buttered, immediately proceeds to 
justify his appointment by the introduction of whole- 
sale changes in the administration, or of ambitious 
schemes which dissipate the cash reserves of the 
state and do not necessarily add to the happiness 
of its inhabitants. It is of the greatest importance 
that the right men should be appointed to political 
charges, and probably few people are less suited to 
these offices than the ordinary collector and magis- 
trate from British India, or the heads of the Police 
or Education departments, or the like, under local 
governments, who cannot resist the temptation to 

155 



INDIA 

introduce into native states those principles of ad- 
ministration which they have always practised, at 
any rate to their own complete satisfaction. When 
once this spirit is introduced, it is most difficult to 
exorcise, and the ruling chief, who probably dreads 
its spread, is himself precluded from raising objec- 
tions by the approval granted as a matter of course 
by the local government to every reform, which sub- 
stitutes for native, British Indian methods of man- 
agement. Viceroys may, and do, one after another, 
lay down the proper limits within which the activi- 
ties of the political agent should be confined, but, 
however much these homilies may be taken to heart 
by those who have to look to the Foreign Office 
for promotion, they become pale and ineffectual long 
before they have filtered through a local govern- 
ment to the political agent who works under its 
direct authority and need care nothing for the For- 
eign Office at Calcutta. It is a matter of infinite 
concern to those who value the precious individ- 
uality of particular states, their historic continuity, 
their associations, and economic and social charac- 
teristics, to see all those distinctive features, which 
never can be restored, year by year obliterated, and 
everything painted a pale red colour. The educa- 
tion of chiefs, moreover, has not been conspicuously 
successful because youths have been brought up to 
be English rather than Indian, and to hanker after 
visits to England rather than residence among their 
own people. The chiefs' colleges do good work, 
and the establishment of the Imperial Cadet Corps, 

156 



NATIVE STATES 

though an extremely hmited measure, is yet a step 
in the right direction. The visits of Viceroys to 
native states are of course most desirable, but 
nothing less than the strictest instructions to local 
governments to order their political agents to let 
the native states alone, and thus get the instruc- 
tions of the supreme Government in this behalf 
carried into effect, will avail to relieve the chiefs 
from interference such as was not contemplated by 
treaty, and is not desired by the India Office or the 
Viceroy, to judge from the speeches, for instance, of 
Mr. Morley and Lords Dufferin, Lansdowne, Elgin, 
Curzon, and Minto. 

The Government of India has, besides relations 
with the native states, foreign relations proper, 
which are alike dealt w^th by its Foreign Office. It 
has for instance such relations with Turkish Arabia 
at Baghdad, with the fortress of Aden, with Muscat, 
the islands of Perim and Socotra, the Persian Gulf, 
and parts of Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, Siam, and 
China. The possession of Aden connotes control 
over the neighbouring Arab tribes, which is acknowl- 
edged by the Turkish Sultan, and with the Sultan 
of Muscat engagements have existed since 1798. 
Treaties also exist with the Arab chiefs who dwell 
upon the shores of the Persian Gulf, wherein the 
British put down slavery, and wherein they have 
an interest of a character owned by no other power. 
The Sheikh of Koweit is under a treaty of obliga- 
tion with the Government of India, and the contem- 
plated construction of a railway from Asia Minor 

157 



INDIA 

to the Gulf, by Baghdad and Busra, renders the 
possession of, or suzerainty over, his small territory 
of great importance. A political resident is main- 
tained at Baghdad in order to look after Indian 
interests in and around the Persian Gulf and in 
Turkish Arabia. Britain has also preserved the 
independence of the Sheikh of Bassein, the centre 
of the famous pearl fishery, who has entered into a 
perpetual treaty of peace and friendship with us. 
Persian affairs are now under the control of the 
British Foreign Office, and though the mission to 
the Shah's Court was at one time maintained out 
of Indian revenues, after various changes, in 1900 the 
Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure recom- 
mended that the charges for legations and consul- 
ates in Persia should be evenly divided between 
India and the United Kingdom. The Protectorate 
over Beluchistan was established in 1855, and in 
1857, after the despatch of an expedition under Sir 
James Outram to the Persian Gulf, the Shah of 
Persia undertook to resign all claims on Herat or 
any part of Afghanistan, and in the event of dif- 
ferences arising with the Amir to refer them for 
adjustment to the British. Under this agreement 
the frontiers between Persia and Beluchistan and 
Afghanistan have been delimited. Of all the foreign 
relations of the Government of India, those with 
Afghanistan are of the greatest importance. The late 
Amir enjoyed a personal subsidy of twelve lakhs ^ of 
rupees a year, to which six more were added when, in 

lA lakh of rupees is £6666. 

158 



NATIVE STATES 

1893, the Durand agreement was negotiated, which, 
like all others, has been continued with Abdul Rah- 
man's son and successor, Habibullah. An Indian 
Mohammedan represents the Governor-General at 
the Court of the Amir, who, in turn, sends an envoy 
to the Government of India. 

Tibet is under the suzerainty of the Chinese 
Government, to which a nominal poll-tax is paid, 
but the government is in the hands of Buddhist 
ecclesiastics, who forbid any foreigners to settle in 
the country. In 1888 a collision occurred with the 
Tibetans, and in 1890 a convention was concluded 
with China providing for commercial facilities, sub- 
sequent to which, in 1895, delegates were appointed 
for the demarcation of the frontier, to which the 
Tibetans declined to submit. After much negoti- 
ation Colonel Younghusband, the British Commis- 
sioner, proceeded to Khamba Jong, but the Tibetans 
resisted his progress. In 1904, however, the expe- 
dition advanced to Gyantsi, where the Tibetans 
attacked it, when the fort was captured, and Sir 
F. Younghusband advanced to Lhassa, where a 
treaty, to which China assented, was signed in 1906. 

The long land frontier between Burma and China 
necessarily leads to communications between the 
two Imperial Governments concerned. Since 1875 
the Home Government has paid two-thirds of the 
cost of this diplomatic intercourse, and now a fixed 
contribution is annually made on this account by 
India. As to our boundaries with Siam, a joint 
commission in 1892-1893 settled the frontier line 

159 



INDIA 

from the Mekong to Victoria Point, and Great 
Britain and France agreed to respect the integrity 
of the central districts of Siam in the Menam Val- 
ley, France recognising Great Britain's influence in 
the territory west of the basin of the Menam, in 
the Malay Peninsula, and over the adjacent islands. 
Foreign possessions in India are now limited to 
five small settlements belonging to the French, of 
which Pondicherry and Chandernagore are the chief, 
and three small settlements of the Portuguese, of 
which Goa is the most important. 



160 



CHAPTER VII 

UNREST 

OF all the causes of the unrest which has of late 
unhappily prevailed in India, the chief, of 
course, is the system of education, which we 
ourselves introduced — advisedly so far as the lim- 
ited vision went of those responsible, blindly in view 
of the inevitable consequences. It is not too much 
to say that in our schools pupils imbibe sedition 
with their daily lessons: they are fed with Rousseau, 
Macaulay, and the works of philosophers, which even 
in Oxford tend to pervert the minds of students 
to socialistic and impractical dreams, and in India 
work with far greater force upon the naturally meta- 
physical minds of youths, generally quick to learn 
by rote, for the most part penniless, and thus ren- 
dered incapable of earning their living, except by 
taking service of a clerical character under rulers 
whom they denounce as oppressors unless they 
receive a salary at their hands. 

The malcontents created by this system have 
neither respect for nor fear of the Indian Govern- 
ment. Nor is this surprising, for the literature upon 
which they are brought up in our schools is fulfilled 
with destructive criticism of any system of govern- 

161 



INDIA 

ment founded upon authority, and the encourage- 
ment given in many quarters to the Congress has 
necessarily confirmed them in their contempt for a 
system which fans a flame intended to burn it to 
ashes. 

Happily, however, it is not the case that educated 
Indians, as such, are necessarily hostile to the British, 
though when subjected as they are, and all India is, 
to Brahminical influences, they are liable to become, 
and too often do become, actively disloyal, the voice 
of the educated classes and of the Brahmins being 
practically one and the same thing. 

Various other occurrences tended to intensify the 
feelings of disaffection engendered in the manner 
above described. For the first time in British-Indian 
history the Viceroy and Governor-General, hitherto 
regarded as the all-powerful agent of a sovereign 
ruling by divine right — for Indians recognize no 
mere parliamentary title — had engaged in a pitched 
battle with the Commander-in-Chief of the forces, 
and had been beaten. More than that, his corre- 
spondence with the Secretary of State on this subject 
had, to the general astonishment, been published, 
so that all might know exactly what had occurred, 
and, incidentally, the administrative partition of 
Bengal had been mentioned in such wise as almost 
to justify those who resented this measure in think- 
ing that the Home Government had sanctioned it, 
at least as much because Lord Curzon desired to 
bring it about, as because they were themselves 
persuaded of its necessity. 

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UNREST 

Then Lord Curzon's Government had, with the 
best intentions, and perhaps upon sufficient grounds, 
taken a step which inevitably increased the prevail- 
ing disposition to disregard established authority. 
He had appointed a commission to overhaul the 
police, who are after all the outward and visible 
signs of authority, in vast areas; for instance in 
the greater part of Eastern Bengal, in which a Brit- 
ish soldier is never, and a sepoy rarely, seen. The 
police are by no means an ideally perfect body. 
There must be among a large force, necessarily 
receiving small pay, some, perhaps many, black 
sheep. Still they are probably on the whole by no 
means unsuitable for the work they have to perform, 
and their delinquencies have been grossly exagger- 
ated by the classes, who have used them as a pawn 
in the game of disaffection. To appoint a commis- 
sion was to allow publicly that in the eyes of the 
Government they needed radical reform and did 
not possess the confidence of their masters. So 
another proof of law and order went by the board 
in popular estimation. 

Nor were causes wanting in England. No sooner 
was the General Election of 1906 over than a meet- 
ing was held at the instance of Sir William Wed- 
derburn to reconstruct the Indian Parliamentary 
Committee and to consider "what action might be 
taken in the new Parliament to advance the inter- 
ests of the Indian people." Sir William spoke of 
their great dissatisfaction with their condition and 
said the way to improve matters was to work upon 

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INDIA 

the lines of the Indian National Congress. Sir 
Henry Cotton, not to be outdone in misrepresenting 
the position, said "the election of an overwhelming 
Liberal majority had roused in India hopes and 
aspirations, and the people were trembling in hope 
that due consideration would now be given to their 
wishes." He advised his friends to go on agitating, 
but to adhere to constitutional methods. But the 
grave anxiety, which speeches such as those have 
not tended to alleviate, is lest these methods, what- 
ever they may be, should pass into a dangerous 
phase of discontent and disaffection. The advice 
of Sir W. Wedderburn, the extra-parliamentary 
chief of the Congress party in England, has been 
taken, and a few members of Parliament who serve 
under this banner have left no opportunity unused 
in order to promote the aims and objects of the 
Congress. 

For instance, they voted against Mr. Morley and 
the Government on Mr. Keir Hardie's motion that 
the salary of the Secretary of State should be brought 
upon the estimates, and persistently questioned Mr. 
Morley regarding the deportation of Lajpat Rai, to 
which, of course, they objected, asked for the repeal 
of the Regulation of 1818, as inconsistent with the 
principles of Liberalism, and for the appointment of 
a royal commission. The Regulation was denounced 
as wholly unparalleled in the British Empire. As a 
fact, however, in the East Africa Protectorate an 
order in Council authorises the deportation of any 
person who, in the opinion of the administration, 

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UNREST 

conducts himself so as to be dangerous to the peace 
and good order of British East Africa. In native 
states in India such power is always taken, and not 
infrequently exercised, an instance having occurred 
quite recently in Hyderabad. The brothers Natu 
were, moreover, dealt with under this Regulation 
not many years since in the Bombay Presidency, and 
it will probably be found that in the agency tracts 
of the Madras Presidency instances of its use have 
recurred at irregular intervals to the close of last 
century. 

Strong attacks were also made on Renter's Agency, 
which the agitators in India were unable to muzzle, 
and which has done good public service by faith- 
fully reporting events from Calcutta. Mr. Morley 
refused to depart from the attitude he had taken up 
regarding Lala Lajpat Rai, and said that he saw no 
cause for apology in the use made of the Regulation 
of 1818, though he would be the first to rejoice when 
its application would no longer be necessary, and as 
a fact he released the two agitators, Lala Lajpat 
Rai and Ajit Singh, when they had been detained 
for about six months. 

Nor were the anti-British agitators without sup- 
port in England other than that afforded by the 
British Branch of the Congress and their supporters 
in and I out of Parliament. 

At Oxford a University India Society has been 
formed, one of the objects of which is the discus- 
sion of the advisability of introducing representative 
government. At its meeting addresses were deliv- 

165 



INDIA 

ered by Sir W. Wedderburn and Mr. Gokhale, when 
the latter said that *'if the Indians had to choose 
between gratitude for the past and duty to their own 
people there could only be one choice." This was 
mild for the speaker, but it would do him good to 
try the effect of a speech on similar lines at a Rus- 
sian university. At Cambridge also there is an 
Indian Club, which is believed to be none too loyal, 
and the same may be said of Edinburgh, where till 
now Indian students have been left like lost dogs to 
wander at will, a state of affairs which an influential 
committee now seeks to amend by providing a club 
under responsible and respectable management. 

In Dublin and elsewhere violent attacks were pub- 
lished upon the Government of India, which in Sep- 
tember prohibited the introduction into that country 
of Justice^ The Gaelic American, and The Indian 
Sociologist, the last-named organ at any rate richly 
deserving to be excluded, whatever may be the 
character of the other two. The editor, an M.A. of 
Oxford, is described as the president of the Indian 
Home Rule Society, which is no doubt some asso- 
ciation designed to tamper with the loyalty of young 
Indians in this country. Inasmuch as this person 
has, of course falsely, described himself, because he 
is a subject of a native state, as owing no allegiance 
to Britain, it is to be regretted that he is not deprived 
of the hospitality he abuses, by being expelled as an 
undesirable alien. 

Mr. Morley has appointed a committee to con- 
sider what can be done to afford to Indian students 

166 



UNREST 

protection from agitators, who lie in wait for them 
and provide them with lodgings, the atmosphere of 
which reeks with disloyalty to the British Crown. 

Among other causes of the unrest must also be 
reckoned the measures taken to stamp out plague 
in Bombay Presidency and the prohibition of the 
holding of great assemblages of pilgrims at religious 
shrines during the prevalence of cholera. It is not 
the case that the salt-tax, lately twice reduced, pro- 
voked opposition, for it is no new thing, but was an 
important source of revenue under the Moguls. Its 
levy therefore is not resented and illicit manufacture 
and smuggling have declined, while consumption 
has increased, so that the tax evidently does not 
press hardly upon the people, though the Deccani 
Brahmin and the Bengali Babu naturally say it 
does, in order to discredit the British Government, 
who get little else by way of revenue from many 
millions who profit by its existence. 

Among the agricultural population there is as yet 
no serious discontent; it is among the town dwellers 
and the artisans that the seditious speakers and 
writers find support, and only among Hindoos in 
the towns. There is, however, and must always be, 
a certain solidarity of Indians against Europeans, 
which Brahmins can easily divert towards disaffec- 
tion, and though they are the natural and intellec- 
tual leaders of the people they have now joined 
hands with anti-Brahminical societies, such as the 
Arya Samaj, which was at the root of the agitation 
in the Punjaub. This sect or society accepts the 

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INDIA 

Vedas as the only and, when rightly interpreted, the 
infallible revelation, but rejects all the accretions 
and additions to the sacred texts and all the corpus 
of rites and ceremonies which now forms the actual 
working religion. The Brahmins, once in supreme 
power, would, however, make short work of the 
innovators and heterodox sects by whose help they 
had reached their goal. 

It is the fashion to speak of want of sympathy as 
one of the causes of the unrest. Sympathy without 
sentiment is indeed a great gift, though ill-regulated 
sentiment is necessarily either foolish or mischievous, 
or deserving of both epithets. It is easy to pre- 
scribe the treatment, not so easy to apply it, when 
sympathy with one exposes the sympathiser to the 
suspicion of another race, caste, class, tribe, sect, 
or religion. Rigid impartiality does not make for 
effusive sympathy — the two things are hardly com- 
patible, and the first is essential. 

No doubt, however, the rank and file of the Euro- 
pean industrial army are often guilty of arrogance, 
and generally of ignorance, in their life and conver- 
sation among the natives, though, as their numbers 
are not large, they may be dismissed as other than 
a serious factor in the situation. The planters, on 
the other hand, are an important and a wholly bene- 
ficial element. Behar, alongside Bengal, and well 
in touch with Calcutta, the capital of Babudom and 
India, is prosperous, contented, and without a parti- 
cle of sympathy with the agitators. This is due in 
a great degree to the fact that it is, and has been for 

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UNREST 

over eighty years, the home of large numbers of 
European planters, who are respected and beloved 
by those whom they employ, for whom they care, 
as it is feared few Indian employers of labour care. 
A similar state of things may be observed in other 
planting districts, with many of which I am inti- 
mately acquainted, and the planter keeps touch 
with the people, not with the English-speaking upper 
castes and classes, with whom, and not by accident, 
the official is almost exclusively associated. 

The European planter is a most useful auxiliary 
and a most valuable adviser to the administration, 
to whom he can impart information by which the 
latter can otherwise hardly come. It is difficult 
here to avoid reference to the recent judgment of 
Mr. Justice Mitra, in regard to the murder of Mr. 
Blomfield by a gang of coolies, which has given rise 
to natural apprehension amongst the planters of 
Behar. To the lay mind it appears that the learned 
judge laid it down that a sufficiently large number 
of men may, without committing murder, kill a soli- 
tary victim, provided, no one blow dealt by any one 
of the gang was sufficient in itself to cause death. It 
is not surprising that the planters have memorial- 
ised the Secretary of State, and, though it is difficult 
to see what he can do, the effect of such a judgment 
cannot be other than disastrous, and it may be per- 
mitted to hope, at any rate, that in no long time it 
may as a precedent be superseded by another in 
which equity may subsist alongside law. 

Such are some of the chief causes which have 

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INDIA 

enabled disaffected Bengali Babus, with the aid of 
a licentious press, to work up anti-British feeling in 
Bengal. Upon this or upon any question, however, 
it is well to see ourselves as others see us, and a 
representative critic is M. Raymond Recouly, the 
well-known French publicist. Writing in the Revue 
Politique^ he admits that the English, wherever they 
go, take with them peace, justice, and material 
prosperity, born of commercial and industrial devel- 
opment, but holds that they do not understand how 
it is precisely this material prosperity which gives 
rise to new aspirations and desires. In proportion 
as people acquire material well-being so do they 
exact more liberty. Then, to point the moral, the 
writer adds that Lord Curzon was too stiff and 
unbending, too full of Csesarism in his external and 
internal policy. It is not clear what the writer 
would have us do. Should we cease to bring about 
material prosperity, or should we regard it, when 
created, as an extinguisher of the benevolent power 
which gave it birth? — and in that event what 
becomes of the masses, who have profited by this 
regeneration? Are they to be handed over to the 
classes, whose sole aptitude is for destructive criti- 
cism, and whose wish is to govern the masses in the 
stead of the creators of prosperity at whose success 
they carp, whose methods they criticise, and whose 
success they, for their part, deny? 

The so-called partition of Bengal was, of course, 
one of the chief causes of the unrest, though it 
rather focussed disaffection which had previously 

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UNREST 

existed among the Bengali Babus, than was itself 
the cause of the agitation. 

The whole movement originated, to a great extent, 
with a small society of the literary, or, as they are 
called in Russia, the intelligent classes, who desire 
to retain a monopoly of the Government appoint- 
ments, which, with the exception of those enjoyed 
exclusively by the Imperial Civil Service, they had 
hitherto enjoyed in the undivided province of Ben- 
gal, and who saw in the partition an attempt to 
break Hindoo predominance. The members of this 
small society control the native press, by means of 
which they established at once a paper boycott, a 
paper national fund, a paper national unity, and 
a paper home industries association, as a result of 
which no English goods were to be imported into 
India. Although the latter, commonly called Sva- 
deshi, has upon the whole failed, not without, how- 
ever, having inflicted great loss and suffering upon 
innocent people — chiefly Mohammedans — it is yet 
capable of mischief, for the party which promotes 
it now asserts that imported British goods are 
tainted like the greased cartridges, that European 
salt is purified with blood, and sugar with bones, and 
that European piece-goods are sized with the fat 
of cows and pigs. Moreover, Svadeshi was merged 
into Svaraj, or independence, and denunciation of 
British goods eventuated in the condemnation of 
British rulers. Unchecked by Government, as for 
a long time they were, the agitators next endeav- 
oured in vain to undermine the loyalty of the army, 

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INDIA 

but it gives occasion for thought that this agitation, 
which only began in the middle of 1904, has been 
spread throughout India, by means of the vernacu- 
lar journals, with a success which an electioneering 
agency in England might well envy. 

Lord Minto, following upon utterances by his 
predecessors to the same effect, said in one of his 
speeches that^ a genuine Svadeshi movement would 
always have the support of the Government of India. 
The word itself means "own country," and it in no 
way connotes a boycott of foreign goods, fomen- 
tation of labour troubles, and seditious disorder. 
Agitators had induced large numbers of people to 
make a vow to purchase only home-manufactured 
fabrics, but no effort was made in Bengal to initiate 
or develop industrial enterprise, in respect of which 
this province has been surpassed by most other 
provinces. Its jute mills are controlled by Euro- 
peans, while the cotton spinning and weaving indus- 
tries of Nagpur, Ahmedabad, and Bombay have 
been chiefly carried on with Indian capital. It is in 
Bombay at present that real efforts are being made 
to develop a true Svadeshi policy, and an iron and 
steel company with a large capital has recently 
been floated there by the sons of the late Mr. Tata, 
who founded the Institute of Science at Bangalore. 
This new company will be financed by Indians, 
managed by Indians, and the iron ore used will be 
Indian. Great preparations are being made for the 
works, which will be situated on the Bengal-Nagpur 
Railway at Sini, and the plant to be erected will 

172 



UNREST 

have a minimum capacity for the annual output 
of 120,000 tons of pig-iron, two-thirds of which will 
be converted into finished steel. The Government 
of India is giving this great enterprise very practical 
assistance. 

Another great scheme projected is the utilisation 
of the rainfall of the Western Ghats for the genera- 
tion of electric power to work the cotton mills of Bom- 
bay city. These schemes illustrate what Lord Minto 
describes as the true Svadeshi movement, and Bengal 
will be searched in vain for any proof of the existence 
of this spirit. 

The policy of Svadeshi has already proved a fail- 
ure, the people declining to taboo foreign goods, 
which till now are cheaper and better than those 
produced in their own country. The policy of Sva- 
raj must also fail so long as England has a spark of 
spirit left and continues, for India's good, and for 
her own, to govern the latter country. 

Notwithstanding a judicial pronouncement to the 
contrary, the word Svaraj can only mean, and of 
course is only intended to mean, independence. The 
pretence that it means self-government under the 
dominion of another power, impossible where half 
the world intervenes and the self-governed are 
300,000,000 as against 40,000,000 of the dominion 
holders, is altogether too thin. No such form of 
government as that indicated has ever been known 
to Asiatics, nor is any such form of government 
possible. Those who cry out for Svaraj want to be 
rid of British administration, and all they would 

173 



INDIA 

retain that is British is the protection of the fleet and 
army, for which a new generation of EngHshmen, 
madder than their predecessors, would pay, while 
all the appointments and all the power in the pro- 
tected continent would fall, not to its inhabitants, 
but to one small oligarchy of Brahmins who despise 
them. 

Intimately connected with Svadeshi is the boycott 
movement started in 1905, which has been practi- 
cally confined to Bengal and Eastern Bengal, and 
in spite of which the imports of cotton goods and 
sugar have concurrently grown in volume. There 
has been talk of starting Svadeshi cotton mills, and of 
other Svadeshi enterprises, but it has had no result. 
The agitators never calculated their requirements 
in men and money, but they have been vociferous 
in speech, and the anniversary of the movement 
is held in Calcutta, where Mr. Surendra Nath 
Bannerji harangues a crowd composed chiefly of 
students and claims great things for his policy. 
Meanwhile in Bande Mataram readers were reminded 
that the independence of America first found expres- 
sion in the boycott of British goods, and that India's 
position was similar to that of all subject nations 
in the initial stage of their struggle. 

Lest there be any mistake as to the attitude of the 
boycott towards the produce of Britain, let me quote 
the Sanjibani: "Oh, brothers, we will not pollute our 
hands by touching English goods. Let English 
goods rot in the warehouses and be eaten by white 
ants and rats." ' 

174 



UNREST 

The mention of the Bande Mataram newspaper 
suggests a word upon the signification of this now 
famous expression, which is translated: "Hail, Moth- 
erland!" whenever the object is to give it an inno- 
cent and commonplace meaning. The words, however, 
mean not: "Hail, Motherland!" but "Hail, Mother!" 
"I reverence the mother" — that is to say, Mother 
Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. The 
word mataram is never used in the sense of the mother 
country. I have, myself, never come across it with 
this signification, neither has Mr. Grierson, who at 
any rate is a great authority. The expression, in 
fact, is on all fours with the cry: "Victory to Mother 
Kali!" which is associated with many scenes of riot 
and bloodshed. 

It is an appeal to the lower instincts and ideals of 
Hindooism in its most demoralising aspects. Students 
now shout the cry into the ears of passing white 
men far more aggressively than Chinamen exclaim, 
or did at any rate twenty years ago: "Fankwei," or 
foreign devil, as an European passed them in the 
street. 

Again consider the origin of the phrase. Bande 
Mataram is the rebel national song. It was put by 
Babu Bankim Chandra Chatterjee into the mouths 
of Hindoo Sanyasis who rebelled against their sov- 
ereign lord, the Nawab of Bengal, in the eighteenth 
century. The novel "Anandamath" was published 
in 1881, and of course, owing to its origin, the phrase 
Bande Mataram is peculiarly obnoxious to the Mo- 
hammedans. It is now habitually used with the inten- 

175 



INDIA 

tion of conveying an insult to them and to the 
English, and so kills two birds with the one stone, 
while boycott and Svadeshi were both alike intended 
to further the anti-partition policy, upon which the 
efforts of the agitators in Bengal and Poona were 
concentrated. 

The case for partition is seldom or never stated, 
and the fact is always overlooked that it had already 
been decided by Lord Elgin that Bengal was too 
large and that division was necessary. ^ 

The political agitators, who organised and main- 
tained the anti-partition movement, and control the 
Bengali press, are for the most part journalists and 
schoolmasters — the latter being very frequently 
politicians — barristers and pleaders, whose inter- 
est it is to concentrate their legal practice in Cal- 
cutta, and zemindars with large estates in Eastern 
Bengal, who, living by choice in Calcutta, find it 
convenient to have their Government headquarters 
there, instead of at far-away and provincial Dacca. 
Others who are in the same position in this behalf 
are the landlords, who saw their interests attacked, 
and the ascendency of Calcutta and of the Ben- 
gali-Hindoo element threatened, by this division of 
Bengal. False stories were accordingly circulated 
to the effect that the object of the Government was 
to raise the taxes, to deport coolies, and such like 
rumours. All through the campaign Hindoo school- 
boys and students have been urged into the front of 
the battle, while the real protagonists have been 
hidden away in the background, and many of these 

176 



UNREST 

youths have been ruined for Hfe by being impli- 
cated in criminal cases, for which they have to thank 
their Babu tutors in the arts of agitation. A cir- 
cular was distributed through the agency of the bar 
libraries in Eastern Bengal, calling the English 
lying cheats, who are ruining our life in the world, 
ruining our industries, and importing their own 
manufactures, plunder our fields, and throw us into 
the jaws of fever, famine, and plague. It is our 
blood they are sucking. Shall we bear it any more? 
These Feringhees have divided our Golden Bengal 
into two parts. Swear in the name of Kali that 
we Hindoos and Mussulmans will serve our country 
united, and will behead anyone who obstructs." 

If the Bengalis had been anxious to prove that 
there were good reasons for decentralisation of the 
administration, rather than for concentration at 
Calcutta, they could not have been more successful 
than they have been. Partition of course affects 
the ascendency of the educated Bengalis, and there- 
fore the interests of the lawyers, schoolmasters, 
journalists, and others whose prosperity depends 
upon the continued influence of Calcutta over the 
whole of Bengal. Partition, moreover, dealt a blow 
at the political influence they were acquiring by 
simulating and stimulating the sense of national 
unity amongst the Hindoo population of the prov- 
ince. Bengalis themselves have no particular claim 
to be regarded as a nation, and, as shown elsewhere, 
they are by no means the most educated people in 
India; indeed, the masses of the province are steeped 

177 



INDIA 

in superstition, and the proportion of Bengalis edu- 
cated, in the European sense, is admitted to be 
about one per cent, of the population. This small 
minority, however, has been very effectively occu- 
pied in debauching the loyalty of the student class, 
prone in every country to revolutionary feelings, 
cereus in vitium fledi, and flattered at being treated 
as a political power. 

In and around Dacca, the capital of the new 
province of Eastern Bengal, the centre of a most 
prosperous country and of the jute industry, there 
has been in the past, until the constitution of the 
new province, very little, far too little, European 
supervision, and the local land-owners, money-lenders, 
and their agents have acquired great, nay, excessive 
influence. These are the classes known as Babus, 
and with their aid it was possible to turn the Sva- 
deshi movement into new and extended channels. 
Everywhere the people were told that the English 
were exploiting and ruining the country. The 
national Volunteer Movement, which was originally 
a harmless physical exercise and athletic club sort 
of association, was, after the model of the "Boxers,'* 
pressed into the service, and since the Moham- 
medans are two-thirds of the population of Eastern 
Bengal, and one Mohammedan is equal to at least 
three Hindoos in fair fight, and since the former 
naturally approve of the eleyation into a Lieuten- 
ant-Governorship of the province in which they are 
in the majority, the national volunteers had a very 
moderate success. Nevertheless, they tried to force 

178 



UNREST 

the Mohammedans to join them in the anti-parti- 
tion demonstrations, which led to riots at Jamal- 
pore, among other places. One Hindoo was shot in 
the thigh, and an old man and a boy were beaten 
to death while engaged in loot, and a few Hindoo 
widows were carried off by Mohammedans, who, 
unlike their own males, have no objection to rela- 
tions with them. Naturally, this riot, which the 
Hindoos and not the Mussulmans provoked, was 
exaggerated into a terrible onslaught by the Mus- 
sulmans upon the peaceful Hindoo population. 

It may fairly be said that the boycott and volun- 
teer movements have failed in Eastern Bengal to do 
more than produce a feeling of unrest and to under- 
mine the discipline of the students' classes, and it is 
admitted that the deportation of the two agitators 
in the Punjaub produced an immediate effect for 
good upon the agitation in this far-distant region. 

Nothing is too unlikely for the supporters of the 
anti-partition movement to urge. Thus we find Sir 
Henry Cotton writing in an English provincial 
paper "that the leaders of both sections of the com- 
munity in Eastern Bengal are, for the most part, 
united in condemning partition, but that the igno- 
rant and unruly masses of the Mohammedans have 
been roused to acts of violence by fanatic emissaries. 
Vain efforts were made to show that certain Moham- 
medan leaders did not approve of the partition, but 
they completely failed. " Had any disproof of Sir H. 
Cotton's allegations been needed, it was afforded by 
Rafiuddin Ahmad, President of the Mohammedan 

179 



INDIA 

Conference, held at Lucknow, to adopt the address 
to Lord Minto, who wrote to the Times to say that 
each member of this deputation was asked his opin- 
ion, and that all were unanimous in their approval 
of partition, and indeed the Mohammedans had 
already, in each province, passed a resolution in 
favour of the change — a fact well known to Lord 
Minto, who, in answering the address, thanked the 
Mohammedan community of Eastern Bengal for 
their moderation and self-restraint. Mr. Rafiuddin 
Ahmad further said, what is notorious to all who 
have any acquaintance with the subject, that the 
partition agitation is engineered in England, and 
kept up in India, owing to the hopes which certain 
members of Parliament hold out to ignorant people 
in Bengal that Mr. Morley will yield if sufficient 
pressure were brought to bear upon him. Thus 
Mr. O'Donnell, M.P., for instance, wrote to Mr. 
Banner ji: 

"Keep on agitating and do so effectively, large 
meetings are the most useful, you have the justest of 
causes, and I hope you will make your voice heard. 
Everything depends on you in India, and remember 
a Whig does nothing unless pressed. Have mass 
meetings by the dozen in every district, indoor and 
out of doors. Morley will yet yield." 

Such encouragement produced no little effect, for 
Bengalis are notoriously more excitable than the 
more staid and phlegmatic followers of the Prophet. 
Moreover the Hindooism of Bengal is of a peculiar 
type, more morbid and emotional than elsewhere, 

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UNREST 

and, as Mr. Oman, a very well-informed and recent 
writer, held, more calculated to effeminate the race. 
It is among the Bengalis that the most popular wor- 
ship is that of Kali, the eponymous heroine of Cal- 
cutta, the mother of Bande Mataram, the goddess, 
who loves and exacts bloody sacrifices, in our day, 
of goats, but before it, of human beings as well as 
of animals. It is among the Bengalis that licentious 
rites are usual at the Durgapuja festival, and it was 
in the temple of Kali at Calcutta that seditious 
meetings have of late been held. It is in Bengal 
alone that the Kulin Brahmins practise a peculiarly 
bad form of polygamy. It would not become a 
subject of the British Empire, and I at any rate 
would never suggest that we should exact in Bengal 
the ethical standard, or rather ideal, which obtains 
in Britain, but that this is polygamy in excelsis is 
evident from the fact that the partisans of the 
Babus have endeavoured in vain to deny its exist- 
ence, including an ex-official of the Bengal Gov- 
ernment who has thrown in his lot with this 
party and actually went so far as to say that 
Kulinism was extinct, until his solitary voice was 
drowned in a dissenting chorus of unimpeachable 
authority. 

It is partly owing to this emotional and excitable 
temperament that the Bengalis have easily been 
induced to imitate and take part in attacks upon 
Mohammedans. Nevertheless, the participators in 
such disorders have been almost exclusively dwellers 
in towns who have come under, or were originally 

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INDIA 

under, the influence of the Babu element. The ordi- 
nary Bengali villager is a peaceable and estimable 
person, and he and his representatives have lost no 
opportunity of manifesting their disapproval of the 
anti-partition agitation. It is, however, the case 
that in the large towns classes which have hitherto 
been loyal and orderly in character have been guilty 
of riotous conduct. For instance, in the riots which 
occurred last year at Calcutta on October 2d and 
3d, while the charges against the police were proved 
to be grossly exaggerated, the Government of Bengal 
discovered the fact that the disturbances took their 
origin in the conduct of a usually orderly class of 
people, from which it drew the conclusion that they 
were the outcome of the writings and speeches of 
agitators. The Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Andrew 
Fraser, warned the Government of India of much 
more serious possibilities, if a naturally turbulent 
class followed this example, as a direct outcome of 
the persistent campaign on the platform and in the 
press, carried on with the object of bringing consti- 
tuted authority into contempt, and encouraging 
resistance to the police. Few will be of the opinion 
that Sir A. Fraser spoke too soon. 

In like manner unusual and unfortunate features 
distinguished the assaults committed by Hindoos on 
Mohammedans at Comilla in March last year, when 
the former, incensed by a meeting held by the latter 
religionists in support of the partition, attacked the 
Nawab of Decca, assaulted his private secretary, and 
killed and wounded some of his foUow^ers. 

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UNREST 

Among the leaders of the anti-British faction are 
men of considerable ability — for instance, Mr. 
Bepin Chandra Pal, who has fully expounded the 
gospel of the new movement. He, like the writer 
of these pages, was present when the first Congress 
met in Madras in 1887, and he again visited the 
southern capital last year, and explained that the 
British had not kept their promises, and that he had 
lost faith in them. 

He denounced Mr. Morley's statement that so far 
as his imagination reached, so long must the Govern- 
ment be personal and absolute, and, unlike some 
adherents of the Congress in England, he admitted 
that there could be no constitutional agitation in 
India. He referred to a full revelation of the policy 
of self-government which was proclaimed by Mr. 
Dadabhai Naoroji at the Congress of 1906. Good 
government, even if the British Government became 
good, was no substitute for self-government. India 
could not be kept by the sword, the army was not 
big enough. It was the natives of India now who 
governed India, the British only stood at the top and 
took the biggest pay. The British incubus once 
removed, prohibitive tariffs would be imposed on 
Manchester and Sheffield goods, and English trade 
with India would soon be a thing of the past. Eng- 
lishmen would be refused admittance to the country, 
and British capital would be rejected. If the revo- 
lution in India were permitted to be peaceful, the 
United States of India would be evolved and the 
aegis of Britain might be left till a conflict arose. If 

183 



INDIA 

the situation then called for a dictatorship, the Amir 
of Afghanistan was a man with a head-piece on his 
shoulders, and it was not merely due to love of 
gaiety that he made a visit to India. Mr. Naoroji 
is claimed, not without reason, as a sharer of these 
views, and he is regarded as a Moderate Congress- 
man and is one whom Englishmen in high places, 
whether wisely or not, go out of their way to honour. 
Few who know Orientals will think it is expedient 
to kiss the rod, and until India turns Christian, and 
probably after, it will be better not to condone openly 
avowed disaffection. 

Again, Babu Bepin Chandra recommended vast 
quasi-religious meetings, at which white goats should 
be sacrificed. White goats probably means Euro- 
peans. The Government would not prohibit such 
assemblies, and the holding of such midnight cere- 
monies at regular intervals would have great mean- 
ing, and might, like the chupatties, work wonders. 
This reference to the mysterious circulation of cakes 
just before the Mutiny frightened the Babu, when 
he saw it published in his own paper, Bande Mata- 
ram, and the newspaper subsequently more or less 
repudiated its own report. Babu Bepin has, how- 
ever, as a consequence of other proceedings, made 
the acquaintance of the inside of a gaol. 

Late in 1907, when agitation in Bengal was sub- 
siding, came the visit of Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., 
leader in Parliament of the Labour party, who,- 
before leaving England, had said: "A lying press 
campaign is being waged to bias the people of this 

184 



UNREST 

country against the natives, and make it difficult for 
Government to do anything to break down the offi- 
cial caste, under which we hold them in the bond- 
age of subjection. I may be able to let a light in 
upon the dark places of Indian government. Need- 
less to add, I go as a warm supporter of the claims of 
the people. My time wall be brief, but with the aid 
of friends I hope to turn it to good account. " Such 
w^ords bespeak, perhaps, an impartial attitude and 
an open mind. At any rate, Mr. Keir Hardie trav- 
elled about Eastern Bengal with Mr. J. Chowdhury, 
a Bengali barrister, connected with the Svadeshi 
agitation, who explained in the press that he was not 
Mr. Hardie's secretary, but served him out of love 
and admiration, without any intention of preju- 
dicing him against any sect or class he interviewed. 
Thus he accused and excused himself, while Mr. 
Hardie spoke at Barisal, a local storm centre, and is 
reported to have said he w^ould do his best to make 
India a self-governing colony like Canada, as what 
was good for the Canadians must be good for the 
Indians, a statement which defies criticism and, as 
Mr. Morley observed, is as reasonable as to hold 
that because a fur coat is good to wear in Canada it 
is good to wear in India. 

Other statements attributed to Mr. Hardie, in 
which exceedingly strong language was used against 
the Government, he repudiated, and of course his dis- 
claimer must be accepted, but the Bengali press de- 
scribed his advent as the act of God, in order to aid 
in the demolition of a gigantic conspiracy against the 

185 



INDIA 

Hindoos. The cry that Russian methods had been 
adopted in Eastern Bengal apparently originated in 
the conviction of Surendra Nath Bannerji, who was 
fined 400 rupees (£26) for breach of the police regu- 
lations for the conduct of processions, the Babu 
having dexterously persuaded the police to arrest 
him, to the profound annoyance of the editor of a 
rival Bengali newspaper, which protested that Babu 
Bannerji had no right to take selfishly all the glory 
to himself. It appeared that Mr. Hardie's known 
views on Asiatic labour in British colonies were not 
such as to commend him at the outset to the Bengali 
Babus, but they overlooked this objection in their 
anxiety to aid him upon his impartial quest after 
truth. The Labour party, he said, was intensely 
anxious to see a much larger share given to the 
natives in the government of the country. Mr. 
Hardie compared Svadeshi with Sinn Fein, but one 
of the Indian weeklies, the Spectator, unkindly 
reminded the Bengalis that he had protested in 
Parliament that Indian manufacturers should not 
have the benefit of long hours of work in addition 
to cheap labour. 

The Indian papers report that Mr. Hardie cried: 
''Bande Mataram," or "Hail, Kali!" at Barisal, 
amid the lusty cheers of his audience. Nothing 
could more aptly have illustrated the extraordinary 
position in which a stranger is placed who, ignorant 
of India, puts himself in the hands of the Babus. 
The leader of Labour in England, the denouncer of 
Indian labour in the Colonies, cries: "Hail to the 

186 



UNREST 

goddess of destruction! in Bengal!" The utmost 
sincerity, the most anxious endeavour to get at the 
truth, the sublimest impartiahty, would not suflSce 
to save a man in such a situation. 

The Amrita Bazaar Patrika kept records of Mr. 
Hardie's words and of his interviews, with the aid 
of interpreters belonging to the disaffected faction, 
with petty cultivators and shop-keepers. Mr. Hardie 
was horrified, it was said, at the contents of a native 
hut, and was evidently unaware that the owners of 
palaces have as much, or rather as little, furniture in 
the rooms in which they actually live in the East. 
A low standard of wants does not necessarily evi- 
dence poverty. A punkah is a luxury, but it is a 
far greater luxury not to need a punkah. 

From representative Mohammedans Mr. Hardie 
was unable to learn anything, owing to his being 
under the guidance of a prominent Calcutta agi- 
tator, Mr. J. Chowdhury, and, on his arrival at Cal- 
cutta, the editor of The Englishman, Mr. Duchesne, 
questioned him upon the reports of The English- 
man's correspondent at Barisal, but he gave no 
information regarding the Mohammedans he had 
interviewed, or the interpreter who had communi- 
cated between him and them. He thought, how- 
ever, that while Government interpreters often made 
mistakes, his own interpreter was exempt from this 
failing, and indeed it is probable that the latter 
made no mistake in carrying out the duty entrusted 
to him. Mr. Hardie seems to have accepted any- 
thing the Hindoo agitators told him of the truculent 

187 



INDIA 

and immoral character of Mohammedans as the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
and he prescribed freedom, such as is enjoyed by 
Australia and Canada, as the remedy for all the ills 
to which Indian flesh is heir. 

This interest in India on the part of Labour mem- 
bers — or Labourites, as they are called in the 
Indian press, probably following the analogy of the 
familiar anchorite — is a new development, and it is 
not a little extraordinary to see an honourable mem- 
ber of Parliament, with the utmost sincerity and 
purity of purpose, dancing to the tune set by the 
Congress as the representatives of the Indian upper 
and aristocratic classes, and repeated in England at 
the expense of landlords, against whom the British 
Government had had by repeated enactments to 
protect their tenants. 



188 



CHAPTER VIII 

UNREST 

IT is now seven years since I urged that the 
newspapers published by Indians for Indians, 
whether written in EngHsh or in the vernacu- 
lar languages, deserved more attention than they 
received ; that they were the sole means whereby the 
inhabitants of India learnt what was going on in 
their own and in other countries; that to them 
exclusively educated Indians owed their news, and 
from them they took their opinions. I testified to 
the ability of these journals, upon which it was one 
of my oflBcial duties for many years to report, and 
gratefully acknowledged their loyalty during the 
dark days of the war in South Africa. The Bengali, 
now so vituperative of and hostile to Britain and 
British administration, then quoted Skobeleff 's state- 
ment that "England is a vampire seeking the last 
drop of India's blood," and added, "India thinks 
otherwise. Russian rule would blast our hopes of 
political progress and advancement and destroy 
our dreams of self-government." The Amrita Bazaar 
Patrika, now another enemy in Bengal, then wrote: 
"If the English proposed to leave, the people would 
entreat them to remain." The Mirror, however, 

189 



INDIA 

said: "The spirit of rationalism and criticism evoked 
by Occidental influences has undermined the founda- 
tions of Aryan faith and religion." 

That was a true word, and the agitator found out 
long ago that contempt for the religion and customs 
of his country cut him off from the masses of the 
people, and began to mend his ways, so that at 
present beef-eating, England-visiting Bengalis are 
lecturing on the impurities of sugar and cotton 
sizing, as practised by the irreligious Englishmen to 
the destruction of the sacred caste of the Hindoo 
purchaser. 

The Tribune of Lahore, not London, thought seven 
years ago that the people of the West had outgrown 
Christianity, wanted something more ethereal, more 
potent than what was presented by Jesus to half 
barbarians like the Jews, and offered a local prophet 
to supply the want. The Hindu Patriot at that 
time deplored the manner in which legislation affect- 
ing the social institutions of the country had been 
forced upon an unready and unwilling people, and 
instanced the Civil Marriage and Age of Consent 
acts. That the Patriot was right I have never 
doubted, and alone among those who wrote on the 
subject I condemned the latter act in the Nineteenth 
Century and predicted that the results would be 
disastrous. True, the act has been a dead letter, 
but none the less the Hindoos do not forget that at 
the instance of a Parsee gentleman, backed by philan- 
thropists and others, their British rulers made an 
offence of one of their cherished customs, because 

190 



UNREST 

it offended against their own ethical ideals. Indeed, 
I firmly believe that the action then taken is one, at 
least, of the reasons why the Indian press at the 
present day manifests a far less satisfactory, and the 
Bengali press a downright seditious and hostile, atti- 
tude toward ourselves and our Government in India. 

Not that the Indian press as a whole can by any 
means be condemned as seditious. Take, for instance, 
recently published passages from the Hindu Patriot 
and the Hindu Mirror. 

The former, the oldest native paper in India, wrote: 

"It is self -advertisers who are at the bottom of the 
mischief, and these people ought to be kept out of all 
serious movements, for then the chances of ugly 
incidents occurring would be reduced to a minimum. 
It is easy to assume the leadership of men, but not 
so the task of rightly leading the people. . . . Only 
such men as have been found fit to guide and con- 
trol the masses, and whose tried ability and wisdom 
are a guarantee that they will not lead their followers 
astray and ruin the cause they have taken up, should 
be admitted and recognised as leaders." 

The latter joined in condemning the extremists, 
and its attitude may be gathered from the following 
passage: 

"There is nothing in the national awakening of 
India to lead one to suppose that it is inconsistent 
with the maintenance of British rule. It is British 
rule which brought about this awakening, and through 
it alone can the ideal of an Indian nation be fulfilled. 
For over a century and a half England has been the 

191 



INDIA 

model for India. Japan cannot trust England out 
of her place. . . . We want a practical spirit in 
all our national work. The extremists think they 
can conquer India by obstreperous noisy agitation. 
Well, they have not done so yet. . . . Internal 
reform and development are the two things essential 
to the real growth of Indian nationality." 

Indeed, most of the journals in other than Hindoo 
hands are well disposed, such as the Parsee papers 
of Bombay, the Lahore Observer, and the Moslem 
Chronicle, and papers edited by Hindoos cannot at 
all be comprehensively classed as disaffected, though 
the epithet applies pretty freely in Bengal. 

In the Parsee Chronicle the opinion was expressed 
that the cardinal mistake of the Government had 
been to remain indifferent to sedition until the 
bitter seed had borne poisonous fruit, whereas the 
application of the ordinary law at an earlier period 
would have met the requirements of the case. It 
was pointed out that in native states the vernacular 
press is only allowed very moderate criticism, in 
spite of the theories of liberty and autonomy of 
which so much is heard from the agitators in British 
India. Even in Baroda, it was suggested, the win- 
dows were, with the help of Mr. Dutt, dressed for 
advanced Indian and European admiration. Par- 
sees were genuinely alarmed for trade lest the 
flow of British capital to India should be checked, 
and their organ pointed out that in the course of 
national evolution social and industrial progress is 
the prelude to political rights. The so-called drain, 

192 



UNREST 

said the Chronicle, was entirely due to the fact 
that rich Indians would not use their own wealth in 
productive industries. The English Radical news- 
papers, which published effusions from youths at 
college, were severely criticised as having contrib- 
uted to the creed that the Liberal Government 
would yield to any demand, however unreasonable, 
for anything called, however erroneously, popular 
rights. 

It would be diflBcult to state the case better, but 
the Parsee Chronicle is not concerned to conciliate 
those who regard a fur coat as equally suitable for 
hot and cold climates and the liberty of the press 
to libel the Government as one of the essential 
virtues and necessary features of British rule in all 
parts of the globe. 

The native newspapers in Bombay are to a very 
small extent Mohammedan, but chiefly Mahratti 
and Gujerati; the former, which is entirely under 
Brahmin management, being violently anti-British 
and the latter fairly moderate in tone and charac- 
ter. The Brahmins who control the press are here, 
as elsewhere, lawyers, landlords, writers, money- 
lenders, priests, clerks, and Government servants, 
and the Mahrattas are landlords, cultivators, trad- 
ers, and followers of other professions and callings. 
The Brahmins, who live in Poona and exercise 
such journalistic influence, are often described as 
Mahratta Brahmins, but they are of course not 
Mahrattas, and do not represent the Mahratta race, 
or any race. They represent their own castt^, the 

193 



INDIA 

most exclusive and aristocratic in the world, the 
pretensions of which they have persuaded socialists 
and democrats in England to champion, a proof 
that the Brahmin's right hand has not lost its 
cunning. 

The papers they inspire breathe fire and slaughter 
against ourselves. The editor of the Vehari, for 
instance, taking a poem by Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as 
his text, said that India had fallen into slavery, 
and that the ultimate means of acquiring indepen- 
dence was by the sword, which must eventually be 
unsheathed. The High Court of Bombay sentenced 
him to two years' imprisonment, and he had pre- 
viously described the empire of the Feringhees 
(Europeans in India) as "Hell on Earth," and *'the 
English as surpassing Nero, Nadir Shah, Tamerlane, 
and even Satan in cruelty. The whole world hated 
the English, and the mercifulness of God was being 
doubted because success was being granted to them." 
For these mild expressions of party feeling he had 
been bound over to be of good behaviour, but this 
was asking too much of a Brahmin in command of 
a Mahratti newspaper, and he soon again offended. 

The Deccan Herald printed a manifesto calling on 
all honest Bengalis to rise and throw the Feringhees 
into the sea, killing 50,000 of them, and the pro- 
prietor and editor of the Punjaubi newspaper of 
Lahore were deservedly sent to gaol for the publica- 
tion of an article in which it was practically stated 
that all Englishwomen who frequented dances came 
thither for purposes of prostitution. 

194 



UNREST 

In the spring of 1907 the Punjaubi accused a 
European officer of wantonly shooting a policeman 
for some triffing offence. There was no shadow of 
evidence to support the story, and the two journal- 
ists concerned were convicted, the convictions being 
confirmed, though the sentences were reduced, in 
two successive Courts of Appeal. The men were 
treated as martyrs; an explosion of anti-British feel- 
ing took place as they were removed to prison, and 
the usual complaints were made in the House of 
Commons that liberty of speech and of the subject 
was being endangered in India. 

But while the Bengali Babus were sowing sedition 
amongst the Hindoos of the Punjaub, and seditious 
editors found support in the British Parliament, 
Mohammedans in Ludhiana were petitioning the 
Lieutenant-Governor for Europeans to replace the 
Hindoo personnel of the administration, and at one 
of the towns they erected a triumphal arch for His 
Honour, on which was inscribed: "For God's sake 
save us from the rule of our fellow-countrymen." 

The editor of the Hind Swarajya of Bombay was 
bound over to be of good behaviour, over-lenient 
treatment, surely, for publishing an article headed, 
*'Do that which has to be done." In this precious 
production it was stated that the English led the 
Indians along the path of sin, and took away their 
arms in order artificially to keep up British rule. 
By their teaching, adultery had begun to spread in 
Indian homes, and women, becoming independent 
and pressing men down, had begun to be led along 

195 



INDIA 

the wrong path. The Indians should engage in 
battle against the enemy. 

But though a Bombay paper is not by any means 
incapable of disaffection, the Bengali press leads the 
riot of disloyalty and no one more richly deserved 
the punishment he received than Bepin Chandra 
Pal, who last autumn got six months' imprisonment 
— a sentence which the High Court of Bengal con- 
sidered upon appeal not too severe, in view of the 
deliberate attempts this Babu made to frustrate the 
administration of justice. He had refused to be 
sworn and to answer questions in the prosecution of 
the conductors of Bande Mataram, and ostentatiously 
demanded the martyr's crown at open-air meetings 
of students. He announced that he had ceased to 
edit, and though he was believed to be still closely 
connected with the conduct of the paper, this was so 
managed that responsibility could not be brought 
home. A barrister, Mr. A. N. Bannerji, who subse- 
quently apologised and was released, was also arrested 
for making seditious speeches, and a youth who had 
been birched for participation in a riot was presented 
with a gold medal by Mr. S. N. Bannerji, whose 
relations with the Bengali were similar to those of 
Babu Bepin Chandra with Bande Mataram. 

Bannerji had been a member of the Bengal Civil 
Service, which he left in 1874, in circumstances into 
which it is unnecessary here to enter, at a time 
when Lord Northbrook was Viceroy, Sir George 
Campbell, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and Lord 
Hobhouse, legal member of the Council. 

196 



UNREST 

About the time the Indian Budget was discussed 
in the House of Commons in the session of 1907 the 
Government of India warned the Bande Mataram 
newspaper that it would be prosecuted for sedition 
unless it mended its ways. Babu Bepin Chandra 
Pal was believed to be the writer or inspirer, and he 
was, at any rate, the editor, of articles designed to 
create prejudice and dislike against the English Gov- 
ernment and the English people; and assailing Mr. 
Morley's declaration that British rule will continue, 
ought to continue, and must continue, with bitter 
criticism as being fatal to the great issue of Indian 
self-government, though elsewhere the hand of God 
is traced in Mr. Morley's blindness and the text is 
then Quern Deus vult perdere. The reception of that 
speech in the House of Commons, said the Bande 
Mataram, saved the Indian nationalists the trouble 
of further argument, and proved the delusiveness 
of the prevalent faith in the ultimate sense of jus- 
tice of the British people. Babu Chandra Pal urged 
Mohammedans and Hindoos to join in finding a 
leader and suggested the Amir of Afghanistan. He 
said India was destined to be a republic w^ith an 
Upper Chamber of feudatory chiefs and a Lower 
Chamber of the common people; than which no 
greater nonsense, even from the Congress point of 
view, could well have been conceived. 

The Yugantar of Calcutta cried: "Revolution is 
the only salvation for an enslaved society. With a 
firm resolve you can bring English rule to an end in 
a single day, dedicate your lives as an offering at the 

197 



INDIA 

temple of Liberty, without bloodshed the conquest 
of the goddess (the mother of Bande Mataram) will 
not be accomplished, let the heads of their intruders 
be given as an offering, let 70,000,000 hands take up 
the sword, beggars and fakirs (religious mendicants) 
have distributed pamphlets among the native army 
in Rawal Pindi, the cup of the English is full." At 
the same time a personal canvass of the troops was 
attempted, and the prevalence of the plague in the 
Punjaub was a valuable makeweight; indeed, it was 
actually alleged that the British introduced this 
scourge, and the tone in which questions on this 
point were put in the House of Commons almost 
suggests that there are in England those who be- 
lieve this extravagance. It was only an additional 
charge that the Government was also accused by 
secret slanders of poisoning the wells. 

In the pamphlet supplied to the troops, Sikhs, 
Punjaubis, Mohammedans, and Rajputs are asked 
why they fight for the English, and why they accept 
lower wages than the British soldier, when the 
negroes in the American army are paid at the same 
rate as their white comrades. The writer also states 
that the Russians in Central Asia treat their Mo- 
hammedan subjects as equals, and sepoys are adjured 
to understand that they are eating their own salt, 
not the salt of the English. The leaflet was pub- 
lished in a journal called India, and purported to be 
a letter from a frontier soldier in America to a native 
soldier in India. It was arranged that 100,000 copies 
should be printed for private and free distribution to 

198 



UNREST 

the troops, in languages which included that of the 
Ghurkha regiments, and the organisation of the 
Arya Samaj, of which Lajpat Rai is alleged to be 
the leader, was believed to be actively engaged in 
this transaction. At any rate there is doubt that 
bar libraries have been particularly active in the 
propagation of seditious sheets, and there is nothing 
surprising in this in view of the fact that lawyers are 
at the bottom of the agitation and unrest and are 
the most influential element of the Babu class. 

While seditious utterances in the Bengal press 
were unfortunately by no means without precedent, 
a new and more serious aspect of the unrest was the 
appearance of the like discourses in the newspapers 
of the Punjaub. 

Were it not that the press of that province is 
under the control of Bengalis, it would be extraor- 
dinary that the latter should exercise so much 
influence over races who regard them with ill-con- 
cealed dislike and contempt. The leaders of the 
Bengali clique had set before them the necessity 
for constituting themselves leaders in the Punjaub, 
and the Arya Samaj and the native press were the 
weapons to hand. The Arya Samaj is at present 
chiefly a political society, the ethics of which have 
been widely adopted in the educational establish- 
ments of the Punjaub. It aims at the amalgama- 
tion of reformed Hindooism with the new forces 
developed by the spread of education. No law is 
binding in their eyes unless its source be the Vedas. 
They have the legal element wholly on their side, 

199 



INDIA 

and it is this class, here as elsewhere in India, which 
has provided the leaders of the agitation and has 
established vernacular journals to aid its propa- 
ganda. The forbearance of the Government was 
mistaken for weakness, and the students as usual 
were brought up to do the shouting and to persuade 
the peasants that the Government was not treating 
them fairly in the matter of water rates and assess- 
ments. The deportation of Lajpat Rai and A jit 
Singh scotched the agitation, but the Arya Samaj 
is still there. 

The arrest and deportation of Lajpat Rai and 
Ajit Singh put an end to open agitation and plainly 
showed that the political propaganda of the Arya 
Samaj inspired the whole movement, the Arya Samaj 
being itself a society which had its origin in Bengal, 
from which province agents had been despatched to 
the Punjaub in order to sow sedition and foster ill- 
feeling against the Government. The object there, 
as in Bengal and Poona, and wherever the Congress 
agents are active, was to obtain control of the admin- 
istration for the English educated classes, to secure 
an India preserved from the attacks of other nations 
by the British army, but from which the British 
themselves should be excluded. The warlike char- 
acter of the people of the Punjaub, our partial 
dependence upon it for the raw material of our 
best soldiers, the chance of exciting disaffection in 
the army where it would be most dangerous — these 
were considerations present in the minds of those 
who selected the Punjaub as the scene of active 

200 



UNREST 

agitation. They reckoned without the firmness and 
absence of panic which distinguished the treatment 
of the case at home and in India, but the germs of 
disaffection proved disappointingly easy to plant, 
and the situation needs, and at the hands of Sir 
Denzil Ibbetson's successor will receive, the utmost 
care and attention. 

The Regulation III of 1818, under which the agi- 
tators were deported, provides that reasons of state, 
embracing the security of the British dominions 
from foreign hostility and internal commotion, occa- 
sionally render it necessary to place individuals under 
personal restraint, and in 1897 the Natu brothers 
were arrested under these powers at Poona, besides 
which they have been used in order to incarcerate 
certain dangerous Moplah fanatics in Malabar. In 
native states such powers are, as has been already 
said, freely exercised, and last year the Nizam of 
Hyderabad expelled the head of one of the great 
families of the state, Nawab Syed Jung Syed-ud- 
Doula, for writing to him or of him in an imperti- 
nent and offensive manner, to the prejudice of good 
government and proper respect for the ruler of the 
state. 

It is urged by the Congress critics that these 
powers were given before legislative councils were 
created, but that does not in any way prove that 
they are not as necessary at the present day as they 
were when no one would have thought of question- 
ing the right of the state to act in this manner. 

In November Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh were 

201 



INDIA 

released, after being detained for about six months, 
whereupon the Bengali expressed a fear lest the 
policy of conciliation should do harm to the new 
spirit of national consciousness, the comments of 
other journals of the like character being less ingen- 
uously disaffected. Efforts were also freely made to 
represent the order for release as the personal act of 
the King-Emperor, who desired to right the wrong 
done by his agents. The action of Government met 
with general approval as it was taken at a time when 
the extremists had fallen into disrepute and the agi- 
tation was subsiding, and only those from whose sails 
a certain amount of wind was taken adversely crit- 
icised the course taken by the administration. 

Other than domestic causes contributed to the 
success of the agents of the Bengali agitators in the 
Punjaub, among the warlike races of which province 
the Russo-Japanese War has no doubt quickened 
the ever-present martial spirit. The defeat of Rus- 
sia has inspired the Babu classes with the idea of a 
United India, wherewith to replace the previously 
existing Congress programme, while the establish- 
ment of the Duma in Russia and of a Parliament 
in Persia have also somewhat stimulated vague 
aspirations of an aristocratic oligarchy for indepen- 
dence. Meanwhile the Bengali anti-English policy, 
which was transplanted to the Punjaub not two 
years since, first fastened on the Land Alienation 
Act, which traders dislike but agriculturists rather 
favour, and next attacked the Punjaub Colonisation 
Bill. In the last twenty years rainless tracts in the 

202 



UNREST 

desert have been irrigated and populated by means 
of magnificent canals, upon the banks of which 
colonies have been planted, which extend to over 
3,000,000 acres of irrigated land, and have a popula- 
tion of upwards of 2,000,000. These were controlled 
by colonisation officers, who endeavoured to perform 
practically all the functions of Government in their 
own persons, till this bill was introduced to legalise 
existing conditions and the powers they exercised. 
Unfortunately, however, some of its provisions gave 
colour to the charge that the conditions of land 
tenure were being somewhat altered. The most 
was made of this, but the bill was altered and passed 
by the Punjaub Government, which was falsely 
accused, by the newspapers edited by the Bengali 
Babus or their agents, of having broken faith with 
the occupiers of the colony lands. Though the 
Viceroy subsequently disallowed the bill, the mis- 
chief had been done. In like manner the riots 
which occurred at Rawal Pindi were due to discon- 
tent promoted against the new land settlement. As 
was stated in the chapter dealing with the land sys- 
tem, settlement in the Punjaub is effected for twenty 
years, at the expiration of which period the assess- 
ment is generally raised, because prices usually rise 
and the revenues of villages automatically increase 
near great towns like Rawal Pindi. Most of the 
land belongs, however, not to agriculturists, but to 
traders and Babus, who at once seized the oppor- 
tunity of persuading the peasants, who hitherto 
had had profound faith in the district officer, that 

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INDIA 

rents were to be doubled all round. As a fact the 
increased assessment in the Rawal Pindi district 
was due to the greater area under cultivation, not 
to excessive enhancements. The revision of the 
water rates upon the Baridoab Canal, which was 
also attacked, was carried out in the interests of the 
general taxpayer, who was getting insufficient return 
from irrigation works constructed out of taxes col- 
lected from his pocket, and similar revisions had 
been made in respect of other Punjaub canals, with- 
out any objection, before the Bengali agitators came 
upon the scene. 

Nevertheless there can be no doubt that the sedi- 
tious propaganda of the Bengal agitators has worked 
great mischief amongst the martial races of the 
Punjaub, where the Government can only last as 
long as the people believe it to be strong, and the 
same may be said in a greater or less degree of every 
part of India. 

No doubt the revenue system of the province is 
somewhat inelastic, and the Punjaub Alienation Act, 
intended to relieve the peasants from the yoke of 
usurers, has not been much welcomed by the Sikhs. 
On the other hand, Punjaub Canal Colonies have 
been a marvellous success, and it is the irony of fate 
that the enemy should have found in them an occa- 
sion to blaspheme. j 

In Madras the agitators met with scant encourage- 
ment, though the visit of Bepin Chandra Pal was 
followed by insubordination in the Rajamundry Col- 
lege, which, however, speedily subsided, without being 

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UNREST 

elsewhere imitated, when the Government supported 
the principal in the disciplinary measures he thought 
it advisable to take. 

It is without surprise, however, I see that Sir H. 
Cotton has stated *'that Madras is disturbed and 
unsettled in sympathy with the feelings of other 
parts of India." The fact, of course, is that this 
sober and well-doing province has exhibited no par- 
ticle of such sympathy, but has been a sad disap- 
pointment to Babu Bepin Chandra Pal and his 
friends. An article recently published in a Bengali 
paper sadly acknowleged the fact, and ended by 
exclaiming, more in sorrow than in anger, "Alas! 
for Madras." Neither has the southern province, 
or satrapy, as Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff used to 
call it, contributed to any great extent to the war 
chest of the Congress, though among the local law- 
yers are some who speak and write on its behalf and, 
being as rich and capable as any men in India, could 
give pecuniary assistance if they chose. 

The press, then, of Bengal and Poona, and in a 
less degree of the Punjaub, has contributed in no 
small degree to the present situation, and the par- 
tition of Bengal was invaluable as a magnet to which 
all the disaffected were drawn, though the charge 
brought against the Government of India of having 
rushed the matter through without inquiry, and 
without any regard to the feehngs of those con- 
cerned, is wholly untenable. 

The question was thoroughly and publicly dis- 
cussed, but no division would have satisfied the 

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INDIA 

Congress party, who see in a divided Bengal a 
weakening of the influence which that overgrown 
province was in a position to exercise. The Moham- 
medans, tw o-thirds of the population, are notoriously 
in favour of the change, and the anti-partition move- 
ment is, in point of fact, nothing but an anti-British 
agitation. It is quite untrue that the majority of 
the Bengal Civil Service was opposed to the measure, 
and the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Andrew Eraser, 
strongly supported it, saying that amongst the senior 
offices of the province, with the exception of one, 
there was complete unanimity in accepting the pro- 
posal. The suggestion that Behar and Chota Nag- 
pur should have been, and w^anted to be, made into 
a separate province, is negatived by their memorial 
protesting against separation, and the obvious line 
to follow was that previously taken when the Assam 
Chief Commissionership v/as formed out of Eastern 
Bengal in 1874 by making a separate administra- 
tion of Assam and certain Bengali districts. It fol- 
lowed, almost as a matter of course, that any further 
subdivision of the overgrown and unwieldy Govern- 
ment would be accomplished by the addition of more 
Bengali districts to the little province previously 
carved out of the big Presidency. The Bengalis are 
not, in the English sense of the word, a nation, and 
such solidity or nationality as they now possess is 
mainly the result of British education and British 
government. That nationality, however, such as it 
is, is in no sense impaired by the levelling up of 
Assam with the districts previously transferred in 

206 



UNREST 

1874, and with the districts since transferred in 1905, 
into a Lieutenant-Governorship; that is to say, an 
administration of exactly the same grade and char- 
acter as that of the Lieutenant-Governorship, which 
once included the whole area. The two divisions of 
Bengal are administered by the same civil service 
and subject to the same rules, laws, and regulations, 
and Eastern Bengal is in no way altered except in so 
far as it receives the undivided instead of the divided 
attention of a Lieutenant-Governor. The scheme, 
be it good or bad, was not, as is often asserted, the 
invention of Lord Curzon, nor is it true that the 
creation of a Lieutenant-Governorship of Behar and 
Chota Nagpur would have been acceptable to those 
concerned. On the contrary, the press of Behar 
protested against any such proposal, and the press 
of Behar is as good as the press of Bengal, and 
better in that it is loyal and moderate in tone. The 
people of Behar no more favour this proposal than 
the people of Eastern Bengal object to partition. 
Indeed, the Amrita Bazaar Patrika ungratefully threw 
overboard the Congress representative, Sir H. Cot- 
ton, who advocated the creation of a Behar province 
in Parliament, saying, "We trust he and his friends 
made it quite clear the movement was initiated with- 
out the knowledge of the leaders in Bengal. As a 
matter of fact there is a vast number of people in 
Bengal and Behar who are very much opposed to 
separation from Bengal." 

No individual can speak to the opinions of many 
millions of illiterate peasants, but it is possible for 

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INDIA 

them by mass meetings to give expression to some 
extent to their opinions, and the Mohammedans, f 

two-thirds of the population, have expressed their 
strong approval of the creation of the new prov- 
ince. In like manner the Hindoo tenants of the 
landlords of Eastern Bengal have met and protested, 
not against partition, but against the agitation 
against partition, and against the boycott, which 
was enforced for a time, to the extreme incon- 
venience of the population, and to the prejudice of 
British trade and British goods. 

Whether or not it was wise to subdivide Bengal 
is an open question, and had the results been fore- 
seen the measure probably would never have been 
carried through. However that may be, the objec- 
tions raised have been purely factious and artifi- 
cial. But the English-educated and English-hating 
Babus were far too shrewd not to see how this 
change affected the unduly privileged position they 
had gained as a result of excessive administrative 
concentration at Calcutta. They hoped to bring 
pressure to bear on the authorities by injuring the 
commerce of the capital by their Svadeshi and boy- 
cott policy, and at the same time, by the same meas- 
ures, to coerce the Mohammedans into opposing 
partition, or to force the Government into opposi- 
tion to the Mohammedans by involving them in 
riots and disturbances which they themselves, not 
without success, set to work to provoke. 

It will be asked, then. Is there nothing in the 
objection raised to the so-called partition? There is. 

208 



UNREST 

The landlords of Bengal are the successors in title 
of those farmers of the revenue whom Lord Corn- 
wallis created landlords after the English pattern. 
They are high-caste Hindoos, and their tenants are 
either Mohammedans or high-caste Hindoos, and the 
British Government has been occupied ever since 
Lord Cornwallis's time in protecting these tenants 
against these British-created landlords, who occupy 
in some respects much the same position as land- 
lords do in Ireland. Indeed, the tenants have num- 
bered among their most able champions Sir Antony 
MacDonnell, no oppressor of subject peoples. To 
this body of landlords it is no doubt a blow that they 
should cease to have as their local capital Calcutta, 
which is also the capital of India, and the seat during 
the cold weather of the Viceroy, and of the great 
officers of state. Journalists, students, and lawyers 
also, for obvious reasons, bitterly resent losing Cal- 
cutta, and it is true that the solidarity of these classes, 
as distinguished from the masses, is somewhat 
impaired. On the other hand, the Mohammedans, 
the Hindoo tenants, and the native Christians have 
protested at mass meetings against the reconsidera- 
tion of an act of state which has endowed them 
with a Lieutenant-Governor of their own and has 
created their districts, which with Assam have a 
population of upwards of 30,000,000, into a separate 
Lieutenant-Governorship. The landlord class, of 
whom the Bengali Babus are the typical representa- 
tives, have money. They can and do agitate. They 
have a violent and vituperative press at their dis- 

209 



INDIA 

posal, a press which does not hesitate to say that the 
object of the agitators is to turn the English out of 
India. Those who adopt this attitude ask us to 
beheve that the late Viceroy acted for the purpose 
of destroying the political solidarity of the Bengalis 
— for it must be remembered that the rest of India 
takes no kind of interest in the question and, indeed, 
is not favourable to Bengali pretensions — they ask 
us to believe that a further extension of administra- 
tive changes, effected without comment in 1874, and 
approved by three Secretaries of State, with their 
Councils of experienced officers, and approved by 
two Governments of India, consisting of many offi- 
cers representing all parts of that Empire, a meas- 
ure expressly and enthusiastically approved by the 
masses immediately affected, is an insult to Bengal, 
a blunder, and an odious and oppressive act. The 
peculiar irony of the situation is that the Bengali 
press, and a few travelled and English-educated 
Bengalis, who no longer represent the feelings of 
the Indian people, succeed in persuading the elec- 
torate in England and their representatives in a 
democratic Parliament to take the side of the classes 
against the masses, of the high castes against the 
low castes, of a small denationalised group against 
the uneducated and unsympathising multitudes. I 
would fain enlarge on this subject in the interests 
of inarticulate masses, who are grievously misrep- 
resented by men who may be, and often but not 
always are, disinterested and impartial, who may be, 
and generally are, able and eloquent, but who, if 

210 



UNREST 

they were angels from above, could not fairly rep- 
resent people whose manners, customs, feelings, 
religions, social prejudices, and prepossessions they 
have abandoned. 

The Indian masses care as little for these orators 
and agitators as they do for representative govern- 
ment, of which they have never heard, but for which, 
by monumental misrepresentations on the part of 
the Congress, they are said to be raising vain cries 
to unanswering Heaven. 

Again it is untrue, though often asserted, that the 
judges of the High Court opposed the measure; 
indeed the change in no way affected them, for they 
continue to have jurisdiction over Eastern Bengal. 
The Chamber of Commerce, too, indignantly pro- 
tested by telegraph against the statement of Mr. 
O'Donnell to the effect that they were opposed to 
partition; nor was the measure even nominally that 
of Lord Curzon, for it was actually settled while 
he was in England in 1904. 

That it will, however, in the end increase the 
expense of administration I believe, for in time the 
new province will want a Chief Court, or High Court 
of its own and the new constitution actually has led, 
as a matter of course, to the entertainment of a 
larger staff of civil officers. The management of 
affairs will no doubt be more efficient than before, 
but whether India wants administration more effi- 
cient than Eastern Bengal previously had, I doubt. 
It is our fault, as I think, that we are forever pur- 
suing progress after our own pattern, without duly 

211 



INDIA 

considering whether those we seek to benefit want 
it, or indeed regard it as progress in a direction in 
which they wish to proceed. 

If, however, British administration of the standard 
type be good for India, and it is, though something 
less scientific would be more suitable, then the more 
eflficient that administration is the better, and there- 
fore the so-called partition of Bengal was a desirable 
measure. Many, however, will think, as I do, that 
when the people are contented, and ask for no more 
management, it is well as a general rule to let them 
alone. 

But if proof of sedition, disloyalty, and disaffec- 
tion has unfortunately been forthcoming in the 
press of Bengal, the Punjaub, and Poona, gratify- 
ing expressions of loyalty have been by no means 
wanting. 

The nobility and gentry, to use their own phrase, 
of Bengal deprecated the wild and mischievous anti- 
British agitation, and the Talukdars of Oudh took 
occasion to issue a similar loyal manifesto. Those 
who signed the latter pronouncement rejoiced that 
they were free from the evils of a press which 
seemed to stir up race against race, class against 
class, and creed against creed. They deplored the 
existence of agitation which sought to embitter 
the people against their rulers, held that the inter- 
ests of all men of experience and moderate views 
were identical with the interests of a Government 
which earnestly sought the welfare of its subjects, 
and realised that improvements to be effectual must 

212 



UNREST 

be of natural growth, and that all classes must 
participate in them. 

Maharaj Kumar Sir Prodyot Tagore sent Mr. 
Keir Hardie a copy of an appeal to the loyalty of 
noblemen and zemindars of Bengal and, referring to 
Mr. Hardie's statement that there was only one 
people in India, pointed out to him that "India is 
a great conservative land, and was even more so 
under Eastern monarchs, with a mass of different 
races with different religions, opposing constitutions, 
and separate manners and customs, which go to 
make it extremely difficult to bring harmoniously 
together the different elements constituting the peo- 
ple. . . . The British Government and the British 
race of commercial men have developed the coun- 
try in such a way as no other nation or Government 
ever did in the past, not for their own interests only, 
but also for the benefit of the people." 

That is a very fair statement of the case, and 
is equally remote from the false and odious creed 
of the anti-British group, and the cant of those 
who pretend that the British differ from all other 
people in desiring nothing but the good of other 
people. 

The Behar Landholders Association in turn passed 
a resolution expressing gratification that efforts to 
create disaffection had failed in that part of India, 
and an appeal promoted by the British India Asso- 
ciation, and signed by large numbers of responsible 
inhabitants of all parts of Bengal, called on the 
people to discontinue to give the slightest counte- 

213 



INDIA 

nance to wild and mischievous propaganda which 
tend to create disloyalty to British rule, and feelings 
of animosity between different classes of the com- 
munities of India. The manifesto contains the fol- 
lowing passage: 

*'We venture to assert that the bulk of the people 
of the country are loyal and law-abiding. We now 
appeal to our countrymen for the display of the prac- 
tical good sense which some of our critics deny us. 
We must not forget that, whatever its shortcomings, 
it is to British rule that we owe the present security 
of life and property, the spread of education, and 
the progress that India is now making according to 
modern civilised ideals. This is emphatically the 
worst time to encourage unworthy sentiments and 
rancorous ill feeling. No true patriot will hesitate 
to range himself with us on the side of law and order 
at the present juncture." 

Nawab Mosheen ul Mulk, who has succeeded Sir 
Syed Ahmad as the leader of Moslem thought in 
Upper India, very plainly informed Mr. G. K. 
Gokhale, who was endeavouring to obtain the co- 
operation of the Mohammedans in the agitation with 
which he is so intimately connected, that he would 
not be able to express his opinions as freely as he 
now could, under any Government, indigenous or 
alien, by which that of Great Britain could conceiv- 
ably be replaced, and he said that the gulf between 
Hindoos and Mohammedans was being widened 
by the present political agitation. Mr. Gokhale in 
return urged that the interests of the Mohammedans 

214 



UNREST 

and Hindoos were identical, but in fact he and his 
cause suffered a serious rebuff at Lucknow. 

While the agitators were actively engaged at 
Lahore and Rawal Pindi, the Maharaja of the neigh- 
bouring state of Kashmir issued a proclamation 
prohibiting all forms of agitation against the 
British Government, an agent of the agitators 
was promptly ejected from his well-governed state 
by the Maharaja of Travancore, and the Govern- 
ment of Mysore publicly rebuked a journal which 
had made unsustainable charges against the British 
Government. 

The Maharaja of Bikanir wrote to the Times, in 
July of last year, to answer for the loyalty of his 
order, which indeed the rise of British rule saved 
from extinction by the Mahrattas. Maharaja Sind- 
hia, the Maharajas of Idar, Patiala, Cooch Behar, 
Dholpore, Jodhpur, and Ulwar, who have given, 
and others who had no opportunity of giving, prac- 
tical proof of their devotion, are well aware of this 
fact, and the ruler of Bikanir pointed out that acts 
of Bengali agitators were in no sense those of the 
Indian peoples, and that the ruling chiefs were truly 
loyal, though self-interest might be a factor in their 
attitude — which surely is matter for satisfaction, 
not regret. 

Upon the return of the Maharaja to his cap- 
ital his people expressed their warm approval of 
his loyal letter to the Times, while he in turn 
congratulated them on having abstained from 
taking any part in anti-British agitation and urged 

215 



INDIA 

them to maintain the Hke prudent course in 
future. 

The Nizam of Hyderabad, one of the three premier 
princes of India, and the ruler of the largest state, 
assured Lord Minto last November "that the tradi- 
tional friendship of his house to the British Raj was 
fully reflected by his people. They were loyal to 
him and, like himself, faithful to the British Throne. 
He did not believe a single man could be found among 
his subjects whose disposition towards the British 
Government was unsatisfactory. Every Indian en- 
dowed with the least sense knew thoroughly well 
that the peace and prosperity which his country had 
enjoyed under the benign protection of his Majesty 
and his august mother would disappear the moment 
that protection was withdrawn or weakened. From 
his experience of twenty-three years as ruler of that 
state he could say that the form of government was 
far less important than the spirit of its administra- 
tion. The essential thing was sympathy, on which 
the Prince of Wales, with the truly Royal instinct 
of his race, laid stress on the conclusion of his Indian 
tour. Sympathy for the people had been a marked 
characteristic of the Government of India, and the 
steps now being taken to associate the people more 
closely with the administration could not fail to 
bring that sympathy home to the Princes and 
people alike." 

Peculiar significance attaches to his Highness' s 
repudiation of the charge that the Government of 
India and its servants are unsympathetic, and those 

216 



UNREST 

who are acquainted with the Nizam know that he is 
no princely sycophant, but a man who speaks out- 
right that which is in his mind. 

As a set-off to the cheap denunciations of Mr. 
Bryan, who pubHshed as his own opinion the arti- 
cles of the Bengali Babu's faith, may be taken the 
evidence of Mr. Niels Grois, a graduate of Harvard 
University and a student of international affairs. 
He was struck by the fact that the Congress at 
Calcutta was a collection of office-seekers, not of pa- 
triots, and in a speech delivered at Boston last year 
he explained the special opportunities of studying 
Indian problems he had enjoyed, and compared the 
disloyalty of the educated classes with the devotion 
of the masses, who realised that their safety, and in 
fact their entire well-being, depended on the continu- 
ance of British rule. In spite of this obvious, undis- 
puted fact it is the disloyal who are accepted as 
witnesses, and it is the most satisfactory feature of 
the projected reforms that another and a far differ- 
ent class will be enabled to give evidence in future. 

It is easier to locate the causes of the unrest than 
to prescribe the remedies, some of which, however, 
are sufficiently obvious, whether or not they are 
likely to be applied. And the first of all is to give 
up the pretence that democratic government is good 
for, or possible for, India, and to admit and act on 
the admission that the agitators are, as the masses 
know, unfit to govern Bengal or any other part of 
India; the second is to acknowledge, and act upon the 
acknowledgment, that an aristocratic basis of gov- 

217 



INDIA 

ernment is natural to the Indian continent, and that 
the people only really revere their own hereditary 
leaders, who should be confirmed and increased in 
power and place. They would develop indigenous 
constitutions, like the village arbitration courts, so 
infinitely superior to our own tribunals, which act 
solely as promoters of litigation, sedition, propaga- 
tors of disloyal lawyers, and as irritants and solvents 
of the solidarity of Indian society. Mercifully, 
reforms are now under consideration which give to 
the leaders of the people the place from which they 
have been well-nigh ousted by the lawyers and other 
products of our educational system, who bite the 
hand that feeds them. Technical education, vil- 
lage and co-operative banks have already been men- 
tioned, and in decentralisation lies a remedy than 
w^hich none is more potent. It has often been pointed 
out that there is too much secretarial government in 
India, and a good secretary may know, and often 
does know, nothing of the languages or of the people 
of the country. All the Congress influence tends 
towards centralisation, and that influence itself is 
very much the creature of this dread bacillus of 
Indian administration, which but for the spread of 
the English language had never been born. 

One of the chief planks of the Congress plat- 
form is the separation of administrative and judicial 
functions, which means further centralisation and 
another blow to the influence of the district officer. 
True, this change would provide a great many more 
appointments for graduates of the agitator class, 

218 



UNREST 

and more particularly for lawyers, who are the soul 
of the agitation and its most able exponents. These 
men are, of course, capable of fulfilling most offices 
as far as intellect and education go, but the masses 
do not want them, do not hke them, and do not trust 
them. They appreciate village arbitration, or, fail- 
ing that, adjudication by the impartial English offi- 
cer, be the matter one for revenue or magisterial 
court. 

The power of the district officer should be increased, 
not, as the Congress wishes, further impaired; the 
right of appeal should be largely reduced, not, as 
they wish, extended, but, after all, the evil can never 
be fairly righted till Western literature ceases to be 
general food for the vulgar, and is taught only in 
quarters wherein it is likely to be understood in its 
relation to countries and peoples to which its lessons 
in different degrees apply. India is a country of 
caste and class, and education should be suited to 
those educated, and not thrown headlong at the 
hungry. The local governments, too, should be 
free from interference on the part of the Government 
of India, and, except in respect of matters of Imperial 
concern, they should be masters in their own house. 

The Indian Congress should be brought under 
regulation, and the danger of alienating the Moham- 
medans, of all classes, and the Hindoo masses, who 
are loyal, by yielding to the Babus and Brahmins, 
should be more thoroughly appreciated. Frequent 
prosecutions for sedition have of late been insti- 
tuted, and sentences of some severity have been 

219 



INDIA 

passed; but the license of the press should be curbed 
by binding over editors under heavy penalties to 
good conduct at the first appearance of sedition in 
their papers, and of enforcing their recognisances 
whenever they next offend. The Indian press is 
not as that of England, and may enjoy the same 
liberty when it shows the same sense of responsi- 
bility. The Government must regain the confidence 
of the masses for the local officer, and inspire a feeling 
that its strength is equal to its justice. Not that 
the Government has been unmindful of the respon- 
sibility which rests upon it at this juncture. 

In November (1907) it passed an Act for "the 
prevention of seditious meetings," which enabled 
provincial administrations to declare any part of 
their territories proclaimed areas in which no pub- 
lic meetings are allowed without permission under 
penalty of fine and imprisonment. Mr. Gokhale 
opposed the bill in the Viceroy's Council and urged 
that the agitators were few in number, which indeed 
is true and is a useful admission. Would that they 
possessed powers for evil only in proportion to their 
numbers! Lord Minto freely allowed that there 
was no disloyalty among the Indian masses, but he 
could not minimise the significance of the Lahore 
and Rawal Pindi riots, the insults to Europeans, 
the assaults, looting, and boycotting in Eastern 
Bengal, nor forget the seditious addresses, news- 
papers, and leaflets, designed to inflame social feel- 
ing, and — fortunately all in vain — to seduce the 
Indian army from its loyalty. At the same time he 

220 



UNREST 

disclaimed any intention of checking the growth of 
poKtical thought, which the Government only desired 
to direct into beneficial channels. The new Act was 
at once put into force in one district of Eastern 
Bengal, but up till now in no other locality. It had 
previously been found necessary to promulgate an 
ordinance for regulating public meetings in Eastern 
Bengal and the Punjaub, and, as the necessity for 
such regulation continued, it was considered desir- 
able to pass this permanent Act. 

The position of the Mohammedans and the ne- 
cessity which exists for giving them representation 
having some proportion, not to their numbers, but 
to their weight, character, strength, and influence, 
can never be overlooked when the remedies for 
unrest are under consideration. 

While the Congress and Babu factions perpetually 
importune the Government with various demands, 
the Mohammedans stand aside, having confidence 
in the impartial justice of their rulers, an attitude 
which is almost inconceivable to those accustomed 
to English party government. There is no doubt, 
however, that the opinion is widespread that agita- 
tion pays, and the writer has frequently heard the 
honours list discussed by Indian gentlemen with the 
remark, "Only the natives who worry and oppose 
the Government are remembered by it on these 
occasions. Loyalty does not pay." The Moham- 
medans have always refused to have anything to do 
with the Hindoo Congress, and have invariably given 
the Government silent but effectual support, and, 

221 



INDIA 

in view of the occurrences of 1905, and the manner 
in which their approval of the partition of Bengal, 
of the population of which they form two-thirds, 
was concealed and denied, they thought it necessary 
to consider their position. They had organised a 
great demonstration in favour of partition, which 
they abandoned at the express desire of the British 
officials, lest it might result in a breach of the peace, 
and they never concealed their regret at the resig- 
nation of Sir Bampfylde Fuller, or their resentment 
at the manner in which certain members of Parlia- 
ment of the Congress group "unwarrantably took 
upon themselves to speak on behalf of the millions 
of India." They accordingly sent a deputation to 
the Viceroy urging the Government to take more 
eflScient measures for finding out the opinions of 
their community, and for giving it due representa- 
tion in any scheme of reform which might then, or 
at any later date, be under consideration. 



222 



CHAPTER IX 



THE CONGRESS 



SIXTEEN years have passed since Sir William 
Hunter wrote that the India of that day was 
the India of the national political Congress. 
He said one of the chief results of the reorganisation 
of Indian education, and the throwing open of the 
Government schools and colleges to all Indian sub- 
jects, irrespective of their race, creed, or caste, was 
to convert what was formerly a hostile into a loyal 
India. We now know, however, that the result has 
been to create an English-educated class, which can 
hardly be described as conspicuously loyal. But if 
Sir William Hunter was wrong in his forecast, in so 
far as it related to the Congress, it is well to remem- 
ber that he was right as regards the masses and in 
reminding his readers that India had, nearly up to 
the time at which he wrote, been more or less hostile, 
and that the Company's servants failed in a policy 
of conciliation. Hunter confidently answered in the 
affirmative the question. Can we conciliate India. ^ 
He said that the desire of the classes, we sometimes 
hear spoken of as the troublesome classes, is no 
longer, as in Lord Metcalf's time, to get rid of 
our Government, but to be admitted within it to a 

223 



INDIA 

larger share. It would be hard to say this of the 
Babu agitators and their dupes at the present 
moment. If words mean anything, they do wish to 
get rid of us, merely retaining our army to keep 
them in the seats of the mighty, from which, with- 
out it, they know they must inevitably, and amidst 
universal rejoicing, be ejected. Yet it is true that 
in 1885, and during the Afghan War and the war in 
the Transvaal, satisfactory proofs of loyal friendli- 
ness were forthcoming from most quarters except 
Bengal and Poona. Even from Bengal came reas- 
suring notes, for perhaps the Babus dreaded the 
shadow of the realisation of their dream. The 
feudatory princes have most nobly vindicated their 
claims to be friends and allies of the Empire, and the 
masses of the people are quite loyal and contented. 
Sir William Hunter describes the Congress, called 
by its members the Indian National Congress, as a 
most conspicuous outcome of the new sense on the 
part of the people of interest in the Government. 
It might be objected that the Congress is not Indian, 
and is not national, inasmuch as it is not by any 
means supported by all the nations in India; but, 
however that may be, it consists of delegates, whether 
or not elected, from the various provinces, who have 
annually met together for twenty-two years in order 
to discuss what in their opinion are the political 
interests of the country, and every year they pass 
practically identical resolutions. They complain of 
the administration of the Excise, and of the Arms 
Act; they ask for a reduction in the salt -duty, so 

224 




% 
O 
H 

< 

Q 

O 

O 

o 
o 



THE CONGRESS 

largely decreased in the last few years; for further 
employment in the public service; that the House 
of Commons should exercise more control over 
Indian revenues and expenditure, and that the 
natives of the country should have a more effective 
voice in making their own laws. At present the 
chief legislative authority is the Viceroy's Legislative 
Council, which makes laws for the whole Empire. 
It consists of the Executive Council, with addi- 
tional members who are selected from the influential 
classes, and from the British mercantile commu- 
nity, and also other additional members nominated 
by the governments concerned to represent the 
great provincial governments, of which latter class 
the writer of these pages was a member. The 
natives of the country were well represented among 
the additional members, and a great many of the 
Congress guns have been spiked, since the adminis- 
tration of the Excise has been improved, the salt- 
tax has been largely reduced, the employment of 
natives of India increased, and the legislative Coun- 
cil reformed in the direction, if not to the extent, 
desired, for Lord Cross's Act provided for the annual 
discussion of the Indian expenditure in the Viceroy's 
Council, for giving members the right to ask ques- 
tions, and for the increase in the number of the 
members of the Legislative Council. 

The moderate wing of the Congress is understood 
to favour a gradual development which in the end 
will make India an autonomous member of the 
British Empire, and Mr. Gokhale is regarded as a 

225 



INDIA 

member of this branch. Certainly in England his 
utterances have been such as are well within the 
purview of such a programme. But there are others 
who desire to separate from Britain at the earli- 
est possible opportunity, and to this end pursue a 
persistent campaign of misrepresentation. Of this 
school is Mr. Tilak, the extremist nominee for the 
Presidentship in 1906, who was convicted some years 
ago of attempting to excite disaffection, but it is 
only recently that politicians of this type have had 
a preponderating influence in what was formerly, 
upon the whole, regarded as a moderate and well- 
affected association. The Mohammedans, however, 
who have good reasons for, and good opportunities 
of, being well posted as to its objects and intentions, 
have always regarded it with distrust and suspicion. 
The partition of Bengal was a godsend to the ex- 
tremist section, which, encouraged by the attitude 
of certain politicians at home, in and out of 
Parliament, made the most of the not unnatural 
objections raised by the Babu class to this adminis- 
trative measure. Day by day the virulent abuse of 
Government gathered volume. 

Soon even Babu S. N. Bannerji, whose hatred 
and resentment have been sufl&ciently pronounced, 
was surpassed by Babu Bepin Chandra Pal, the edi- 
tor, till a prosecution was launched, or part editor, 
or proprietor, or part proprietor of New India and 
Bande Mataram. The latter paper plainly states 
that "our British friends should be distinctly told 
that their point of view is not ours, they desire to 

226 



THE CONGRESS 

make the government of India popular without 
ceasing in any sense to be essentially British. We 
desire to make it autonomous and absolutely free of 
British control. We must go to the hamlets." 
And they have gone to the hamlets, to debauch the 
loyalty of the peasants, and they are endeavouring, 
with as small prospect of success, to capture the 
Congress caucus, the chief obstacle being the oppo- 
sition of the moderate men of means, who supply 
the sinews of war, and have no idea of generally 
running amok, and losing all that they have in 
the resulting disorder. Then the peasants, and the 
masses generally, have no sympathy and no concern 
with the movement, nor the old-fashioned Hindoos, 
nor of course the Mohammedans, who have publicly 
recorded their disagreement whenever opportunity 
has offered. They have indeed recently started a 
Congress of their own, called the All India Moslem 
League, as a protest against the assumption by the 
Hindoo Congress of the epithets Indian and National. 
Among the objects of this league are the promotion 
of loyalty to England and of an attitude of 
readiness to fight for the British Government. 

In the end Mr. Naoroji and not Mr. Tilak was 
nominated President for 1906, but the victory really 
lay with the extremist party, whose views he ex- 
pressed in a speech, asking for self-government 
like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies, 
and denouncing the present government of India as 
a barbarous despotism unworthy of British instincts, 
principles, and civilisation. He further advocated 

227 



INDIA 

the raising of a corps of missionaries to go to the 
hamlets and preach this creed under the supervision 
of the Congress caucus, which, as has been aheady 
remarked, maintains a branch in England. 

The two parties in the Congress are now known 
as the Moderates and the Nationalists, the latter 
having taken their title from the Irish party, whose 
organ, the Freeman's Journal of Dublin, has pub- 
lished various articles in favour of an autonomous 
India. A nice dispute arose between these two 
parties as regards the place at which the meeting for 
1907 should be held, and as to the President who 
should preside, and finally Surat and Dr. Rash 
Behary Ghose were declared the winners. Dr. 
Ghose is accounted a Moderate, and no doubt he 
may well be so described in comparison with some 
of his competitors for the post of President, but it 
should be distinctly understood that, though there 
may be two factions in the Congress, both of them 
are now associated with disloyal propaganda. 

Nevertheless the Congress is not sufficiently ex- 
treme to satisfy these extremists, for the Amrita 
Bazaar Patrika has published a series of articles 
entitled, *'How to make the Congress useful." In 
one of these it is admitted that the association con- 
sists merely of English-educated middle-class men 
and that to make it really national, zemindars, mer- 
chants, and representatives of the cultivators of 
the soil should be included within its ranks. The 
reason why they keep aloof is well known, for the 
Congress only interests itself in political matters, and 

228 



THE CONGHESS 

it is an open secret that zemindars and men of 
higher rank, though they may not join it, provide 
it with the sinews of war. The Amrita Bazaar 
Patrika, however, in an unwonted burst of candour, 
asks its readers to remember "that many of our 
wants and grievances are of our own making, and 
that it is within our power to remove them without 
any official or outside help. No nation has ever 
been able to regenerate itself by relying on others. 
It is impossible for the Indian National Congress to 
bring about the salvation of India so long as it does 
not teach the people self-reliance. The Congress 
to be of any use should teach the people to arrange 
for their own education, to cease quarrelling amongst 
themselves, to develop their industries and agri- 
cultural resources, and to learn the art of self- 
government." 

It has been mentioned that a schism arose regard- 
ing the appointment of a President last year, and 
that the extremists wanted Mr. Tilak, whom they 
described as a hero and a martyr, because he was 
sent to prison ten years ago for good and sufficient 
reasons. There are degrees amongst the agitators, 
Babu Surendra Nath Bannerji being regarded as 
more moderate than Babu Bepin Chandra Pal. 
Bannerji is, however, sufficiently hostile, and, though 
he is believed to have renounced Hindoo orthodoxy 
and prejudices, in his speeches he generally appeals 
to them in order to arouse enmity against the Gov- 
ernment. It is far too readily assumed that the 
railway strike which has lately taken place has not 

229 



INDIA 

been fomented by these agitators, for it is well known 
that their emissaries have been exceedingly active 
amongst the employees of the East Indian Railway, 
and most disgraceful speeches have been made at 
important stations on the line. 

Mr. Skrine, who compiled a very interesting life 
of Sir William Hunter, probably altogether overesti- 
mated his hero's influence when he wrote that what- 
ever result the Congress achieved was due to the 
interest of the latter with the British public. How- 
ever that may be. Hunter's support was of that dis- 
cerning and moderate character, which the Congress, 
now become a society dominated by the anti-British 
damned-Barebones school of controversialists never 
appreciates. It is more accurate to regard the Con- 
gress as one of many results, not as one of the chief 
causes, of the unrest in India, to which, however, it 
has of late most actively contributed, while, since it 
has declared the boycott to be a legitimate weapon, 
it has committed itself to open defiance of the law. 
At its meeting in 1906 resolutions were sprung and 
passed without any real discussion, and votes were 
not taken, so that it is impossible to say how far 
those present concurred in what are put forward as 
its deliberate opinions. In 1907 the meeting broke 
up after a free fight, and there was not even a pre- 
tence of any resolutions. It is, however, highly 
improbable that the majority really believe that 
representation after the English pattern could or 
should be introduced into India, or that compul- 
sory education could or should be forced upon a 

230 



THE CONGRESS 

country so utterly unprepared for so advanced a 
measure. 

As it is of much importance that the facts regard- 
ing the Congress should be known, it may be per- 
missible to take two exponents of its policy, one in 
India and one in England, whereby a fair idea will 
be gathered of what this movement really means. 

Mr. Subramania Iyer, a capable Brahmin, lectured 
at Tanjore not long since, and he is as good an 
example of a moderate Congressman, as Congress- 
men go, as could well be quoted, having been for 
many years editor of one of the best native papers 
in India, the Hindu. He spoke of the short, bright 
interval of Mahratta rule, when the superiority of 
the Hindoo nation was asserted. Now the main 
facts regarding this miserable period in the history 
of India, when the Mahrattas robbed and plundered 
at will, and attempted nothing like peaceable or 
orderly administration, will be found in the first 
chapter of this little book. His review of the relig- 
ion of the country is so little accurate that he 
describes temple worship and perpetual widowhood 
as practices of Buddhism, and the influence of 
Buddhism on Hindooism as bad, which is entirely 
contrary to the fact. But "Shadwell sometimes 
deviates into sense," and Mr. Subramania Iyer 
does point out that prior to British rule there was no 
political unity and no political consciousness. He 
regards the Queen's proclamation as extorted by 
fear, and says the moment the cause for fear 
was gone the promised reforms were abandoned. 

231 



INDIA 

Chapters II, III, IV, and V of this work, which are 
wholly unargumentative, should supply a sufficient 
answer to this charge. 

He then declares that not complete severance 
from England, but self-government on the Colonial 
model, is the object set before himself and his friends, 
and he quotes a judgment which, not without reason, 
occasioned great surprise, by Mitter and Fletcher, 
JJ. of the High Court of Bengal, which he describes 
as a golden declaration, and which certainly gave 
to Svaraj a meaning contrary to that which the 
word obviously owns. '"Svaraj then," says the ex- 
editor, "is our political ambition, and Svadeshi and 
boycott are our weapons. India will not be a sub- 
ject nation forever, now we have the support of the 
High Court judges." 

Now, svaraj simply means self-government sans 
phrase, and does not connote dependence. On 
another occasion, these discourses being suited to 
the audiences, the same speaker said: "What is the 
result of a century's rule in India? Destitution, 
disease, physical and moral emasculation." Of 
course Lord Curzon, who endeavoured to deal with 
the difficulty at the root, and to amend the deplo- 
rable educational system, comes in for unmitigated 
condemnation for "his reactionary designs and his 
autocratic manners." 

Then take a representative of the Congress in 
England, preferably a Member of Parliament, either 
Mr. O'Donnell or Sir Henry Cotton, whichever be 
the leader of the little company of captains which 

232 



THE CONGRESS 

represents in the House of Commons views which 
are abhorred by all the Europeans in India, civil, 
military, and commercial, and receives no support 
from any quarter, other than the Congress, the 
Babus of Bengal, and the Brahmins of Poona. It 
may be convenient to take Sir Henry Cotton in 
preference to Mr. O'Donnell for the moment, 
because, like myself, regardless of the warning of 
Job, he has written a book, in which he says that 
"the existence of a Liberal administration compels 
the adoption of liberal and sympathetic principles 
in dealing with Indian questions on the spot." 
Now if there is one thing upon which all sane men 
are agreed it is that party politics should not be 
introduced into our Indian Empire, the inhabi- 
tants of which regard them in the same light as the 
Shah, of whom I heard in Persia, who when an effort 
was made to explain to him what Whig and Tory 
meant in England, summed up the subject by say- 
ing: "Why does not the King knock these madmen's 
heads together till they do agree .^" At any rate it 
is needless to say that the slightest suspicion of 
party advocacy is forbidden to civil servants, and 
any infraction of this rule would very properly 
involve their dismissal from the public service. 
Indeed continuity of policy has been followed with 
rare exceptions, and these relate solely to external 
relations. Again, a complete ignorance of what is 
common knowledge in India, or an evident desire to 
obscure the facts, is exhibited by assertions like 
this: "The Babus rule public opinion from Peshawar 

233 



INDIA 

to Chittagong." Now the Babus are the most 
unpopular class in India, and no traveller returns 
and writes a book without anecdotes which illus- 
trate this perfectly notorious fact. It might fairly 
be said that the Babus of Bengal and the Brahmins 
of Poona are the leaders of the English-educated 
anti-British class, but public opinion, thank heaven! 
is not yet confined to these classes. What is to 
become of the English, who have made such a mess 
of the great Indian problem, whose chief success in 
the opinion of Sir H. Cotton has been the perma- 
nent settlement of Bengal, to protect the cultivating 
tenant against the landlord, under which settlement 
the British Government has been actively legislating 
at frequent intervals ever since the days of Lord 
Cornwallis; whose Indian railways have ruined the 
carrying trade, just as English railways ruined the 
stage-coaches; whose education is only partially 
successful because it is not compulsory; whose tea 
and indigo industries are bolstered up in some man- 
ner of which no one else is aware by public money, 
while the estates themselves are watered with the 
blood and tears of unwilling slaves, who neverthe- 
less cannot be got, at the expiry of their indentures, 
to leave their prison, in which they settle for life; 
whose census commissioners are such lunatics that 
they see in these settlers the salvation of at least 
one little province? Surely it would be better that 
these bunglers and oppressors, the English, should 
as soon as possible leave the country to be governed 
by the Babus, and that, it appears, actually is the 

234 



THE CONGRESS 

solution. Sir Henry Cotton positively writes: "It 
is the purest folly for us to continue to rule on worn- 
out lines only suited to a slave population, and the 
principal object of the Indian Government should be 
to apply itself to the peaceful reconstruction of a 
native administration in its place. The withdrawal 
of the military support would not be injurious to 
Anglo-Indians, but would constrain them to adopt 
a more conciliatory demeanour towards the people 
of the country. England could withdraw her own 
standing army, and secure treaty rights for India 
from the European powers." This she would no 
doubt do after the abolition of the army and the navy, 
and with this climax of preposterous politics, quota- 
tion from "New India" may end. It will indeed be 
a new India when these principles are adopted, and 
yet it is curious to see how, even in a work like this, 
a residuum of common-sense clings to a man who 
has gone through what in most cases proves to be a 
highly educative experience. It is doubtful whether 
the Labour benches will altogether agree with Sir 
Henry Cotton when he writes that "the basis of 
internal order in India is a patrician aristocracy 
of indigenous growth trained to control and lead 
the lower orders." Now such aristocracy would of 
course govern India, if they had the chance, accord- 
ing to Indian ideas, as the Congress party says; and 
what are Indian ideas? The rule of caste, wealth, 
birth, and strength, and of forced labour, which is 
not exactly the theory which finds favour with those 
who have been induced to support this propaganda 

235 



INDIA 

in England. Again, what will the allies of the little 
Congress party in Parliament say to this: "The 
maintenance of an hereditary landholding class is 
the corner-stone of internal political reconstruction. 
The lower orders stand in urgent need of an aris- 
tocracy above them. The prosperity of every coun- 
try requires that there should exist within it, not 
only a proletariat, the great body of the people who 
devote themselves to labour, but also a class of 
capitalists who provide funds which enable labour 
to become productive. It is only under the fertil- 
ising influence of capital that labour is productive"? 
This is not quite the note of the speeches which 
are delivered on this subject by socialists. Nor do 
they recognise that birth as well as election and 
nomination is a principle of selection. Mr. Ramsay 
Macdonald, the whip of the Labour party, commits 
himself to the plain statement that capital is the 
enemy. In short. Sir Henry Cotton can no more 
than other people run with the hare and hunt with 
the hounds, and it is impossible to condemn your 
fellow-countrymen, root and branch, and throw in 
your lot with hostile and unreasonable critics of your 
class and calling, and at the same time to obtain 
credit for retaining some saving sense of sanity upon 
side issues of the alphabet of economical and politi- 
cal questions. It is of course very difficult to sat- 
isfy democrats and socialists in England and an 
aristocratic oligarchy of Brahmins and landlords in 
India, and although the latter seems able to per- 
suade the former that all will be right, if they can 

236 



THE CONGRESS 

oust us, as the Peshwas ousted their masters, and 
ruled in their stead, yet an ex-official turned anti- 
official writing on this subject obviously occupies 
so difficult a position as to be entitled to com- 
miseration. 

Another ex-Indian civilian and ex-Member of 
Parliament, Sir William Wedderburn, lately pub- 
licly stated that the Indian people complained that 
the masses are in extreme destitution, and that it is 
owing to the effects of a disastrous administration 
that the country is scourged by disease and famine. 
It is a sufficient answer to this that, upon the agi- 
tators' own showing, the people of India have no 
means of making known their feelings; that no such 
opinions as these are expressed by their hereditary 
leaders, and that the people repudiate as their rep- 
resentative the English-educated Babu class, which 
is practically denationalised, and merely joined for 
the present with the members of the Brahmin caste 
because they can, when thus reinforced, more easily 
harry and harass the administration. 

It is of course extremely mischievous that ex-offi- 
cials should become anti-officials, and lecture about 
the country that independent opinion is unanimous, 
that the people think this and think that, and it is 
worse than mischievous that they should asperse an 
active and able administration by attributing to its 
action calamities which it does all that humanity 
can do to alleviate. Nor is it easy to refrain from 
noticing that ex-officials who have spent their lives 
as concurring, and presumably willing instruments of 

237 



INDIA 

Government, and who no sooner leave its service 
than they state that contact between Europeans and 
Asiatics is prejudicial to the latter race, have to 
explain why in their own careers they failed so 
conspicuously to practise what so incessantly and 
insistently they preach. Hostile though it is to Gov- 
ernment, the Congress at first welcomed Lord Cur- 
zon, and flattered him profusely, but they roundly 
denounced him when he declined to be led, and 
refused to receive the President of one year who 
wished to lay the resolution of the Congress officially 
before him. It might, however, lead to the grossest 
misunderstanding in India if the head of the Govern- 
ment received officially a member of a body which 
claims to represent 300,000,000 of people, of whom 
probably 99j per cent, have never even heard of its 
existence. Nor would the Viceroy be carrying out his 
elementary duty if he encouraged anything which 
admitted the false and fatal principle of party poli- 
tics into Indian administration. 

Partition gave an opportunity to the Congress 
party of exhibiting their strength, and, success- 
ful as they have been in making demonstrations, 
their success would have been even greater had 
they not combined with this agitation the policy 
of Svadeshi, which their sympathisers outside Ben- 
gal have shown little inclination to accept, and of 
boycott, which has altogether failed from the com- 
mencement. 

The meeting of 1907 proved altogether abortive 
and broke up in confusion, but even then some craft 

238 



THE CONGRESS 

and subtlety was displayed by the leaders in claim- 
ing that the Moderates were overwhelmed by the 
Extremists, the fact being that both wings are 
hostile to British rule in India. 



239 



CHAPTER X 

SOCIAL REFORM 

THE movement in favour of social reform in 
India has been overwhelmed by political 
agitation, which alone has of late engaged 
the energies of the English-educated classes. Indeed 
the agitators have realised the absolute necesssity 
of adopting the conservative attitude which is that 
of the masses. Ten years ago all those who are 
now clamouring against British rule in India were 
eagerly attacking customs which are woven into the 
very framework of Indian society, and at that time 
a great deal was heard about the necessity for edu- 
cating women. Even then, in South India at any 
rate, where female education is most advanced, the 
prejudice against sending girls to public schools was 
somewhat wearing away, partly owing to the parents 
having become wise enough to see that there is no 
greater impropriety in girls going to school than 
boys, and partly because of the substitution, wher- 
ever practicable, of female for male teaching agency. 
There is no doubt that among Hindoos generally 
the impression prevails that education is likely to 
lead women to wrong-doing, and however much the 
Government, philanthropic and missionary bodies, 

240 



SOCIAL REFORM 

and wealthy and generous individuals may do to 
advance this cause, the real spadework must be 
accomplished, and the greater part of the cost must 
be borne, by the people themselves, who have the 
cause at heart. As the eminent Indian education- 
alist, Mr. Raganatha Mudaliar, said of persons of 
his own position and education, "We feel it to be a 
grievous sin to marry our infant daughters, but even 
if we could summon up sufficient courage to set at 
naught the Shastraic prohibition, we succumb to the 
weeping entreaties and expostulations of our wives. 
There is a general consensus of opinion amongst edu- 
cated men in India that widows should be allowed 
to remarry, but such remarriage on a large scale will 
be possible only when women learn to assert their 
rights against perpetual widowhood. We would 
allow the members of each division of a caste" — 
only that, be it noted, not the members of different 
castes — "to intermarry, but there is no hope of this 
reform, small as it is, being carried into effect unless 
our women rise to something like the intelligent 
level we have ourselves attained." Such was the 
feeling in Madras, the province most advanced in 
respect of social reform, and most backward in 
accepting the Congress political programme. 

The subject of social reform is necessarily vague, 
comprehensive, and ill defined. The Indian masses, 
it has never been denied, are fulfilled with the con- 
viction that the social customs and institutions which 
have so long stood the test of time possess peculiar 
merit, and are superlatively well adapted to their 

241 



INDIA 

own requirements. The masses in this behalf include 
all Hindoos who are not, and, off the platform, 
a great many of those who are, English-educated. 
The people are passionately attached to the simple 
faith and primitive ways of their forefathers; they 
are prepared to take what a Brahmin says as gospel, 
and the women, who are the most conservative half 
of the population, exercise the strongest possible 
influence over the men, though the true position in 
this respect has been obscured and, unintentionally 
of course, misrepresented, by interested observers, 
whose field has necessarily been limited to the lowest 
and most degraded classes. 

If any proofs were wanted that the desire for 
social reform had only touched the merest super- 
ficial fringe of the Indian peoples, it would be found 
in the double life led by most of the reformers them- 
selves. An ardent radical in his domestic life does 
the very things that in his public life he denounces. 
He believes in astrology, marries his children in 
extreme youth, spends more than he can afford on 
ceremonies, submits to the exactions of the priests, 
and in general confornis to Hindoo standards. 

He is perfectly well aware that if certain texts can 
be found in favour of remarriage of widows, at least 
an equal number can be found to condemn this prac- 
tice, and that custom, which is the real arbiter, has 
been against it for centuries. 

That experienced statesman. Sir John Strachey, 
in 1899 wrote: "The people of India are intensely 
conservative, and wedded, to an extent difficult for 

242 



SOCIAL REFORM 

Europeans to understand, to every ancient custom, 
and between their customs and their rehgion no hne 
of distinction can be drawn." 

It is, of course, true that no social conditions 
render it necessary now that the community should 
be divided into sections, with impossible barriers 
between them, for the four principal castes do not 
confine themselves in these days to their proper 
avocations. The Brahmin is now as much an oflScial 
as he was formerly a priest; the Vaisya as much a 
clerk as a shop-keeper; the Sudra as much a peasant- 
proprietor as a farm-servant, and the Kshatriya, 
once a warrior, is now anything you please. Not 
only can no member of one intermarry with a mem- 
ber of another of these castes, but there are innu- 
merable subdivisions of each of the actual castes, in 
respect of which the same disability obtains. Legis- 
lation, of course, is powerless to deal with such a 
situation; if, indeed, legislative interference were 
desirable, which I, for one, do not think. 

The failure of the Age of Consent Act has proved 
that it is useless to legislate too far ahead of public 
opinion. As to the practice of infant marriage, the 
evils resulting from it have been greatly exaggerated. 
Perverse as such a practice appears to us to be, its 
moral and social consequences have not been, by 
any means, as disastrous as reformers pretend. The 
majority of women in India are probably as happy 
as women elsewhere. Custom reconciles to any 
hardships, but such hardships are the subject of 
habitual and monumental exaggeration. The ordi- 

243 



INDIA 

nary Briton is unable to understand the sacramental 
and mystical conception of marriage as a binding 
tie for this life and the life hereafter. One of the 
ablest Hindoo judges who ever sat on the bench in 
India, Sir T. Muttuswami Iyer, "deprecated any 
legislation which would involve an irritating inter- 
ference with the most important domestic event of 
the majority of his Majesty's Hindoo subjects." 
The Hindoo system provides every woman with a 
husband, and every man with a wife, and if in Ben- 
gal, where all those customs are most prevalent, 21 
per cent, of the women are widows, as against about 
one half that number in England and France, on 
the other hand, the proportion of unmarried females 
is more than twice as great in England as in Bengal. 
It must also be remembered that cohabitation or 
actual marriage does not take place until the girls 
reach the age of puberty, the marriage ceremony, 
in fact, being nothing more than an irrevocable 
betrothal. Girls must marry early when they ma- 
ture early, and as the mean age for married women 
in India is twenty-eight, and in England forty, 
there is, in fact, no great difference, when climate 
and length of life are taken into account, the child- 
bearing ages in Europe being fifteen to forty-five, 
and fifteen to thirty-five in India. 

It is well known that in old times girls were 
married after they came of age, that remarriage of 
widows was once permitted, and that there is no 
authority in the Vedas for the practice of suttee. 
Nor in very early times did the system of caste 

244 



SOCIAL REFORM 

prevail, for it was developed towards the end of the 
Vedic period, and arose immediately from the fact 
that all class occupations were hereditary. Soon 
the smallest difference, as regards trade, profession, 
or practice, became enough to lead to the institu- 
tion of separate castes, which are now some 4000 
in number. But, of course, it must be understood 
that existing conditions have obtained for many 
centuries, and that the Shastraic system is of purely 
antiquarian and academic interest. 

It is one thing to fall back upon the Shastras for 
historical light, and another to base modern reforms 
upon these ancient texts. They are worthy of all 
reverence, as they hand down the traditions of a 
past civilisation, and no social reformer can neglect 
or ignore them, but it should be manifest that rules 
and observances which became men of a bygone age 
cannot suit people who live in the present day, in dif- 
erent circumstances and environments. The Bible, 
the law, and the prophets can all be expressed, so far 
as Hindoos are concerned, by the one word custom. 

Upon the much-debated subject of social inter- 
course, volumes have been written. The fact is 
that complete fusion, and intermarriage to any great 
extent, are impossible. 

Of all the Hindoos I have seen in India none were 
more Europeanised, or associated more freely with 
Europeans, than the late Mr. Satthianadan, M.A., 
LL.M., professor of philosophy at the Presidency 
College, Madras. He and his wife were both Chris- 
tians, who habitually frequented the society of the 

M5 



INDIA 

English in the Presidency capital, and he, as a high- 
caste man, possessed particular and, among Indian 
Christians, rare facilities for noting the feelings of 
Hindoos of all grades. He wrote: *'The educated 
classes claim to be free from the trammels of caste, 
but there is glaring incongruity between thoughts 
and deeds, between public professions and private 
practice. Much is said against caste, but it still 
reigns supreme in some form or another even in the 
most enlightened circles. There is still absence of 
sympathy between the peoples of India. They are 
separated by impassable barriers, and, seeing that 
the points of disparity between the different classes 
that constitute the Indian population makejtheir 
cordial sympathy with one another impossible, how 
can we expect the Indian population, made up as 
it is of those motley races, to mix cordially with 
Europeans, a people entirely different from them 
in creed, colour, customs, and costume? India con- 
sists merely of a vast assemblage of races divided 
into countless unsympathising castes and classes. I 
admit that English education and Western civilisa- 
tion have amalgamated to some extent the forces 
among the Indian population, but greater exertions 
must be put forth in the castes and classes to bring 
about a deeper sympathy and more complete union. " 
Then referring to the Briton he quotes Emerson: 
"Every one of these islanders is an island himself, 
safe, tranquil, and incommunicable." 

But while there can be no fusion and intermar- 
riage, friendly intercourse is by no means difficult, 

246 



SOCIAL REFORM 

provided always that the Briton can talk the Indian's 
language. 

Of all reasons which prevent free intercourse the 
chief is ignorance of the languages on the part of the 
British. It is true that certain tests are exacted 
from those who enter the public service, but they 
are of a rather elementary character, and no sooner 
does the official enter into his kingdom than he finds 
that everybody about him speaks perfect English, 
and, though he does not know it, nothing reaches 
his ears except what has passed through these, 
generally by no means disinterested, interpreters. 
The irregular relations which formerly were so fre- 
quent between Englishmen and the women of the 
country led to a complete acquisition of the lan- 
guage in many cases, but the number of English- 
women in the country has of late so much increased, 
and any European having relations with native 
women is so relentlessly persecuted by them, and so 
disparaged by his fellow-countrymen generally, that 
this approach to the people is practically abolished. 

The pursuit of sport is indeed the only means of 
access remaining, except for those choice spirits 
who strike out lines for themselves regardless of the 
opinion of the little station in which their service is 
for the most part passed. The freemasonry of sport 
obtains just as much in India as anywhere else. In 
the hunting field at home all classes meet upon an 
equal footing, and this is very much the case in the 
jungle. Association of this kind leads to a frank 
interchange of views, and to mutual self-respect and 

247 



INDIA 

esteem. Statements are often made that Indians 
will not bring the gun up to an elephant, for instance, 
but a sportsman who has shown that he himself is 
dependable will never have occasion to make this 
complaint. Upon the whole the wonder is that men 
unarmed, or if carrying a second rifle inexpert in its 
use, can be got so readily to put their lives into 
imminent danger to please a stranger, and for a 
paltry wage. 

The Indian is no more wanting in courage than he 
is in truthfulness, but unless he knows his man he is 
always on the defensive, and is ready with some, 
probably quite unnecessary, wile. 

He naturally does not feel at home with a man 
who cannot talk to him, or, if he tries, will, in all 
good faith, very likely use disrespectful language, 
and say for "you," "you fellow." 

Sir Alfred Lyall explains this matter in a couple of 
lines as well as could be done in a volume: 

"There goes my lord the Feringhee, who talks so civil and 
bland, 
Till he raves like a soul in Jahanum if I do not quite 

understand. 
He began by calling me sahib, and ends by calling me fool." 

It is indeed true that want of knowledge is rooted 
in the want of sympathy. I cannot see that there is 
anything whatever in the plea frequently put for- 
ward that there can be no friendly intercourse until 
the women on both sides frequent the society of the 
men. Surely there can be no friendly intercourse 
unless each side accepts the customs of the other, 

^48 



SOCIAL REFORM 

for which, in point of fact, there are always excellent 
reasons. At any rate, to make that a condition on 
the threshold is to prevent any stepping over it. 
Nor does the absence of commensality constitute 
any legitimate ground of complaint. So little is this 
a bar to social intercourse that I am convinced that 
any attempt to break it down will set back such 
progress as has been made. Table manners are a 
stumbHng-block of the most mountainous character, 
and it is not too much to say that different races in 
Europe abhor the customs of their neighbours in this 
respect, and that the English are convinced that 
they are the only clean feeders. Natives of India 
have wholly and absolutely different standards, and 
it is exceedingly sound policy for our intercourse to 
stop short at the table. I have myself seen spirited 
efforts made to break down these barriers, all of 
which were foredoomed to failure. Attempts on 
the part of Europeans to give Indian gentlemen 
refreshment in separate tents and houses, with cooks 
and attendants of the proper denomination, have 
resulted in nothing but misunderstandings. At the 
first meeting of the Congress held in Madras infinite 
pains were taken by the Governor of Madras and 
his staff to entertain the delegates, with, I think, 
very moderate success. 

Unfortunately it is a fact that Europeans who 
can really carry on a conversation in the vernacular 
languages are exceedingly rare. It is the most val- 
uable asset a public servant can have, but it is 
not recognised in honours and promotions. There 

249 



INDIA 

is also, unfortunately, some truth in the statement, 
often repeated, that the influence of Englishwomen 
in India tends to widen the breach. There are, of 
course, many exceptions, but upon the whole there 
is little love lost between Englishwomen and Indian 
men. Moreover, in spite of speeches, writings, and 
protestations, extremely little has been done by the 
natives themselves to bring about what is commonly 
called social reform, a subject as diflScult to define 
in India as it is in England. Even when some per- 
son, greatly daring, marries a widow, he finds that 
he and his wife are lightly regarded, if not absolutely 
despised, even by those who have actually urged 
them to such action. Practically nothing has been 
done in the thirty years which have elapsed since first 
the subject was broached, and, instead of adhering 
to the main lines as laid down by the leaders in this 
behalf, the reformers of late have occupied them- 
selves with anti-nautch demonstrations and endeav- 
ours to prevent dancing girls from taking part in 
festivals and celebrations. Women of this class 
are just now strongly denounced, and it is alleged 
against them "that they have cast down many 
wounded, yea, many strong men have been slain by 
them, that their house is the way to hell, going down 
to the chambers of death." All this may be true, 
but immorality, like everything else in India, tends 
to become hereditary, and the position of the temple 
female attendants no doubt amounts to a publicly 
acknowledged profession, though it is subject to 
limitations, and is not on all fours with that of 

250 



SOCIAL REFORM 

the ordinary prostitute. Objection is now taken to 
the presence of these girls at the solemnisation of 
weddings and on festal occasions, though their noto- 
rious association with students is an occasion for 
hard winking. 

Originally they were dedicated as virgins to the 
service of religion, and they are now the handmaid- 
ens of the idols, of which the priests and other have 
long said with Horace: "iVe sit ancillce tihi amor 
pudori."" No doubt this custom and others are 
open to objection, but those who are busily occupied 
in preaching social reform are too apt to lose sight 
of what the domestic life of India really is, and from 
a perusal of tracts and pamphlets it would be readily 
imagined that it stood in urgent and exceptional 
need of drastic reform. No doubt it is capable of 
improvement, but, at the same time, it is probable 
that in many respects it is superior to that of other 
countries, and in few respects falls below normal 
standards. It would be extremely difficult to draw 
a picture of the family life of Europe, and it is 
equally difficult to draw a picture of the family life 
of India, but as a common Christianity imposes 
standards possessing some similarity in ideal, if not 
in practice, upon all the inhabitants of Europe, so 
the Brahminic or Hindoo system conduces to the 
maintenance among the many peoples and races of 
India of something approaching a common standard 
of life and conversation, and, even where customs 
repugnant to Hindoo ideals exist, the scheme on the 
whole will be found to be fashioned on the Hindoo 

251 



INDIA 

or Brahminic system. It is very difficult, almost 
impossible, to distinguish between caste and Hin- 
dooism. The superintendents of the Indian Census 
of 1901, who reported for the different provinces, 
are pretty well agreed, where they have to define 
Hindooism, in saying that so long as a man observes 
caste rules he may not only do pretty much as he 
pleases, but may actually offer his individual wor- 
ship to any god or hero, to any stick, stone, or 
natural feature, which his own inclination, or the 
animistic traditions of his village, has endowed with 
supernatural attributes of a constructive or destruc- 
tive character. 

An accomplished Bengali gentleman, Mr. Ghose, 
who published a life of the Maharaja Nabkissen, a 
faithful friend of the English in the days of Clive, 
observes that '* there is no fear of English rule going 
wrong if we remember the principles of Queen Vic- 
toria's character, and in respect of reforms follow 
the English method of evolution, not that of rev- 
olution. " Nevertheless, our Indian legislature has 
made spirited inroads upon the principle of guaran- 
teeing to the natives of India their own customs and 
their own religion, though whenever these have been 
of a revolutionary character they have been still- 
born. Such, for instance, has been the fate of the 
Age of Consent Act, as I anticipated in an article 
published in the Nineteenth Century for October, 
1890. It is necessary, therefore, in describing the 
domestic life of a Hindoo family, to take an example 
from a characteristic area, and it is best to go to the 

252 



SOCIAL REFORM 

Deccan or South India, for there Mohammedan rule 
and Mohammedan customs never took root. Even 
in Hyderabad the people are Hindoos, and the 
Nizam and his Mussulman lords a mere privileged 
handful, while on the south-west coast there are 
states which were completely unaffected by the 
Mohammedan conquest. 

To begin at the beginning, the site must be chosen 
and the house must be built according to caste rules, 
in auspicious months; hymns are chanted; saffron, 
turmeric, and sandal are smeared upon the beams; 
flowers are offered, and the edifice is apostrophised 
according to custom in that behalf provided. The 
house consists of one or more quadrangles with open 
courtyards, and a blank wall generally offers to the 
street. The kitchen is the best apartment and com- 
bines in some respects the characteristics of a chapel 
and a cooking place. The church in England is 
often a small affair beside the mansion house, and 
the missionary's chapel a lowly hut beside his bunga- 
low, but in Indian houses no part should be higher 
than the kitchen, into which no person of a lower 
caste than the master may look or enter. The 
other rooms open upon an inner verandah, in which 
cows and calves are stabled. There is little furni- 
ture; indeed, that actually used consists of a few pots 
and pans, brazen vessels, and elementary bedsteads, 
these simple articles being generally collected in a 
small, plain, unpretentious room. The married sons 
live under the paternal roof, and an extra man makes 
no difference, as they all sleep upon the floor, and 

253 



INDIA 

after all, in many parts of Europe, and at least in 
one capital, men-servants do the same, or use the 
sofas and chairs. In the centre of one of the quad- 
rangles there should be an altar, on which grows a 
shrub of holy basil. Suppose the owner to be a 
Brahmin, and already installed, he must rise before 
the sun and repeat texts from the puranas. I give 
one, and have translated it, as I have others quoted, 
for the benefit of such as require a translation: 

"Rama, thou givest all good things. 
Who but thyself deliverance brings ? 
Thee with one voice we all adore. 
Ah! let me praise thee more and more." 

Then comes the rinsing of the mouth, washing of 
the feet, cleansing of the teeth with a particular kind 
of stick never again used, then the bath, prayers, 
oblations to the sun, and the fixing of the caste 
marks upon the now purified person, the salutations 
north, south, east, and west, and the repetition of 
the sacred Sanscrit text: 

"Hail earth and sky and heaven, hail kindly light. 
Illuminator of our purblind sight." 

Before the midday meal there are more prayers, 
ablutions, and offerings, and then the male members 
sit on the floor and eat their rice or other grain, with 
pickles or condiments, off plates of plantain or other 
leaves. Food is eaten with the hand, and water is 
poured into the mouth, so that neither the vessel 
nor the fluid touches the lips. There are prayers 
again at supper-time, which comes at sundown in the 

254 



SOCIAL REFORM 

simple healthy life of the Indian villager, but the 
perpetual prayers and ceremonies are capable of 
some abbreviation. No one goes to the temple for 
service as we go to church, but worship is performed 
daily by the official priest, just as Mass is served in 
the Catholic Church, and upon holidays and festivals 
the people collectively adore the gods. As for the 
females, it will suffice if they worship their husbands, 
which is their actual duty, and they are pretty well 
occupied with bearing and rearing children and with 
their domestic duties, and are probably not inferior 
in domestic virtues to any in the world. 

It may be fairly said of a Hindoo woman, "that 
the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, 
that she rises while it is yet night, and gives meat to 
her household, that she stretcheth out her hand to 
the poor, and reacheth out her hand to the needy, 
that she looks well to the ways of her household, and 
eateth not the bread of idleness, that her children 
rise up and call her blessed, and her husband praiseth 
her." 

She is hard at work all day, and, in the cultivating 
classes, helps in the field. At night, when the lamps 
are lit, she makes obeisance to the god of fire, saying, 
if the translation be accepted: 

"This flame proceeds from God above. 
This lamp is lit by heavenly love. 
So praise we when each night begins 
The flame which burns away our sins." 

Much the same ceremonial may be seen any day 
in a Russian village, where the peasant bows him- 

^55 



INDIA 

self before the eikon and the lamp in the angle of the 
wall, and, like the Hindoo, he too knows that he is, 
and that no one else is, orthodox. 

There appears to be some doubt as to whether the 
good deeds of the husband and wife are transferable, 
but it seems certain that, after her husband's death, 
she can hasten his final absorption into beatitude by 
her prayers and penance, which is very much hke the 
doctrine of the elder branch of the Christian Church. 

In the lower castes, of course, where the worship 
is rather demonolatry or animism, the daily ritual 
amounts to little more than an obeisance to the sun 
in the morning and to the lamp at night. 

There is no consciousness during one life of a 
former existence, and the average Hindoo troubles 
himself little about religion, but very much about 
caste. 

Hindoos are divided amongst themselves into 
non-dualists, who believe nothing has any real sepa- 
rate existence from the one God; dualists, who hold 
that the human soul and the material world have a 
distinct existence, and the non-dualists, who never- 
theless ascribe to the deity a twofold aspect: the 
supreme spirit the cause, and the material universe 
the effect. All this is to us as real as the difference 
between the 0/1,0 and the o/i,otoovo-ta, and among the 
Hindoos common folk are content to worship Siva 
or Vishnu, whose outward and visible signs are 
respectively the horizontal line and the trident on 
the forehead. 

Now had Christian missionaries been content that 

256 



* SOCIAL REFORM 

converts should retain these marks, the top-knot, and 
other signs and observances of caste, Christianity 
might have made more way in India. The Catho- 
Hcs once had a fair hope of the wholesale conversion 
of the extreme south, where they actually brought 
over high-caste natives, until the controversy known 
as that of the Malabar rites was decided against, 
what was held to be, trifling with idolatry. It is 
too late now, even if another policy were adopted, 
for Christianity and low caste have become once 
and forever inextricably associated. 

All Indian questions are caste questions. No Eng- 
lishman who had turned Hindoo would be accepted 
as an authority, even by Hindoos, regarding the 
religious and social characteristics of the people he 
had forsaken, but here in England the authorities 
accepted by the public and the press are almost 
invariably those who, having been, have ceased to 
be Hindoos, or, having a special mission to con- 
vert Hindoos, are naturally not impressed with such 
evidence as tends to show that Hindoos stand in 
no need of conversion. Yet an ancient civilisation 
and a faith professed by hundreds of millions are 
entitled to respectful treatment, and the law-abiding 
— for with the exception of one class the Hindoos 
deserve the epithet — to an unprejudiced judgment. 
Yet I have seldom heard other than misrepresenta- 
tion on the platform in this country of the domestic 
life and the character of the people. 

It has already been recorded in regard to Hindoo 
marriages, the evils of which have been so enor- 

257 



INDIA 

mously exaggerated, that the actual marriage cere- 
mony is no more than a binding betrothal, and it 
may amuse the reader to quote from the venerable 
Institutes of Manu the following advice: 

"Let a man not marry a girl with reddish hair or 
deformed limbs, nor one troubled with sickness, nor 
troubled with too much or too little hair, nor one 
immoderately talkative." Polyandry is not much 
practised in India, and it may be worth mentioning 
that the Nairs of the Malabar coast are not polyan- 
drous, for though their system allows a woman to 
change her husband, she is not permitted to have 
more than one at a time. The instincts of the Hin- 
doo are monogamous, and he rarely takes a second 
wife, unless the first has no male issue, when the para- 
mount religious necessity for having a son to per- 
form his funeral sacrifices renders obligatory either 
a second wife or an adoption. 

The marriage ceremonies are long, complex, and 
costly, and eating, drinking, and presents are not 
wanting. The question is asked and answered, but 
the garments are tied together in the place of the 
presentation of a ring, the exact counterpart of which 
is a gold ornament fixed around the neck. Rice is 
thrown over the newly wedded, just as it is with 
us; hymns, feasting, and processions follow, and the 
bride, who in the case of respectable families is never 
of a marriageable age, returns to her parents' house 
to await the arrival of womanhood. Though in 
many respects these marriages resemble our own, 
there is no wine, of course, and the feasting is vege- 

258 



SOCIAL REFORM 

tarian in character, for the upper classes never drink 
wine nor eat meat unless they have received an 
English education. The lower classes may enjoy 
flesh and liquor, but they must and do approximate 
to the standards of their betters if they wish to 
obtain the respect of the pubhc. Pariahs, who are, 
of course, a caste, though a low one, eat flesh, and 
that which they do eat is generally carrion, since the 
cow is sacred, goats are wanted for their milk, and 
animals generally are too expensive to be slaugh- 
tered. Those who have lived in Indian villages will 
readily understand the feelings with which the 
upper classes regard the flesh-eaters, who are, it 
must be admitted, in all respects infinitely their 
inferiors. 

It must not be supposed because they are not 
eaten, that animals are always kindly treated. True, 
the Jains, who are a handful, maintain hospitals 
for sick and wounded creatures, but bullocks and 
horses exist in conditions which would give the 
S.P.C.A. a little work, though the interference of 
such societies is to be strongly deprecated, as an 
agency foreign to the ideas of the people and prac- 
tising that interference with their domestic life which 
they strongly and very naturally resent at the hands 
of strangers. Yet the Hindoos give their cattle a 
rest and a feast at the New Year festival, and on other 
proper occasions, and mxake offerings to the King of 
the Snakes, whose worship, in one form or another, 
and to a greater or less extent, prevails all over India. 

Though no wine is drunk except by those who have 

259 



INDIA 

learnt English habits, it is not the case that the 
British introduced alcohol into India, where intox- 
icating drinks have always been known and used; 
such use, however, except among the English edu- 
cated, being confined to the lower classes and 
regarded as disgraceful and degrading. Temperance 
is as distinctly a characteristic of the Hindoos as 
tolerance, and in both respects they are an example 
to the nations of Europe. Notwithstanding the 
evidence of M. Meredith Townsend to the contrary 
effect, Hindoos, besides dinner and supper, have a 
light early breakfast of cold rice or cakes. Tea- 
planters hope that at some future time tea drinking 
will become universal in India — a consummation 
most devoutly to be desired, because the drinking of 
tea involves the boiling of water, and would in India, 
as it does in China, preserve the people from malarial 
fever, which, and not cholera or plague, is the real 
scourge of the continent. The Government should 
spare no pains to push tea drinking, and it is to the 
credit of Lord Curzon that he did help the planters, 
too little encouraged in the past, to sell their salu- 
brious leaf in the country of its origin. 

Travellers are allowed a good deal of Hcense as 
regards caste rules, which really are the most reason- 
able in the world, elastic where they cannot be kept, 
and rigid where they can. Everywhere, however, 
wayfarers are helped, and to assist the son of the 
road, as Sadi calls him, is a religious duty. 

To quote again from my translation, in the Insti- 
tutes of Manu it is written: 

260 



SOCIAL REFORM 

"Who sends the stranger hungry from his door 
That stranger's sins are added to his score; 
Who entertains a stranger, though his sins 
Are red as scarlet, he salvation wins." 

Many ceremonies attend the dead as well as the 
living, and the sick man in his last moments is carried 
from his bed to lie upon the earth or beside the river. 
Thus the house avoids pollution, and nothing can 
pollute the sacred stream or holy mother earth. The 
chief mourner, whose claim is decided for the same 
reasons as obtain among ourselves, performs the 
sacrifices before the body is borne to the funeral 
pyre, made up perhaps, in the case of the poor, by 
contributions of a few sticks from neighbouring 
houses. He walks three times round the blazing fire 
carrying a pot of water, which finally he dashes on 
the ground: "Thus the pitcher is broken, and the 
dust returns to earth as it was." Some castes, of 
course, bury their dead, and all do in certain excep- 
tional cases. Ceremonies are less elaborate with the 
lower castes, and the same distinction applies to 
the periodical rites for deceased ancestors. As a 
result of these prayers and ceremonies, the spirits of 
the departed are provided with a temporary body, 
while without such they would wander about as 
malignant ghosts.. 

"^XV '^**' etSwXov drap (f)pev€<s ovk evi Trdfiirav** 

Next the temporary body is changed for the ethi- 
cal envelope and passes into the ancestral heaven, 
there to remain until absorbed, or, as is more widely 

261 



INDIA 

held, receives judgment according to its works in 
this world, being reborn after a longer or shorter 
period spent in the purgatorial heaven or hell, to 
accomplish again a mortal life in another guise, until 
at length it qualifies for nirvana, or absorption into 
the Divine essence, for the Hindoos also believe that 
each soul is divinoB particula aurce. They acknowl- 
edge likewise a Supreme Being, the immortality of 
the soul, and the necessity for and the existence of 
another life in which sin and virtue meet with their 
reward. 

In the Sama Veda the typical man of sin is 
described. His head is Brahmin murder, his eyes 
Hquor drinking, his face theft, tutor slaying his ears, 
woman killing his nose, cow destroying his shoulders, 
adultery his chest, oppression his stomach, while 
smaller sins are otherwise distributed about his per- 
son. He is black, which of course the upper classes of 
the Hindoos are not, as indeed Hindoos of any class 
seldom are, and he is bright-eyed and malevolent. 
In the Institutes of Manu the body is otherwise de- 
scribed, and if I may again translate, in this wise: 

"Bones are its rafters and its beams. 
Tendons and nerves its scores and seams, 
Blood is its mortar, and the skin, 
Frail covering, roofs the mansion in. 
Its occupants are age and woe. 
Death and decay, as sure as slow; 
Right gladly should the vital spark. 
The soul, renounce a home so dark. 
Birds at their pleasure quit the tree, 
Who leaves the world alone is free." 
262 



SOCIAL REFORM 

This is a melancholy picture, but is the Hindoo 
home melancholy? By no means, nor are Hindoo 
women miserable. Their lives are made up of light 
and shade, like those of other races, nor have they 
less of light. Miss Bhor, a talented Mahratta lady, 
wrote of Bombay: "In those parts of Western 
India, where the Mohammedan invasion very slightly 
affected the old Hindoo customs, the Brahmins and 
other high castes neither veil themselves nor live in 
seclusion, and have as merry a time as the men." 
This of course is equally true of South India, and of 
all parts of the continent wherein the Mohammedans 
did not settle in strength. In all such regions, and 
they are far the greater part, though they do not in- 
clude the great cities visited by travellers, women 
wear no veils and suffer no seclusion, but freely live 
and move and have their being. Of child marriages 
the same writer says: "The Hindoo system is bad, but 
it is worked out on the whole in a kindly and sensible 
fashion. Marriages turn out happily much oftener 
than might be thought possible under such circum- 
stances, and as regards child widows, in the working 
out of this iron caste system there is much real 
heart and tenderness, which soften its cruel decrees." 

Colonel Meadows Taylor, one who knew the^ Hin- 
doos if ever any one did, said: "They are as courteous 
and intelligent a people as any in the world, kind to 
their children, respectful to their parents, charitable, 
honest, and industrious, and with such vices as are 
common to human nature." He denied that they 
were untruthful, and saw in caste the means of 

263 



INDIA 

enforcing the, at least outwardly, moral conduct of 
its members. 

In like manner Mr. R. C. Dutt, when he leaves the 
company of the English-educated agitators, testifies 
to the "disHke and distrust the people of India have 
of the rapid introduction of modern Western meth- 
ods. Their dislike to the alienation of their chiefs 
and rajahs, who cease to Hve and move among, and 
become strangers to, their own people. There is not 
on the whole earth a more frugal and more con- 
tented peasantry." 

Some day Mr. Dutt, who wields the pen of a 
ready writer, will explain how such a people can be 
ground down by the misgovernment of aliens, and 
how the association of their chiefs and rajahs in the 
government, which is now proposed by Mr. Morley 
and Lord Minto, can be other than grateful to the 
people whose characteristics he, on this occasion at 
least, so faithfully describes. 

Abbe Dubois, than whom no European ever knew 
India better, but who takes, I think, an unduly 
unfavourable view of the character of the people of 
Mysore, writes: "Animated in this behaM by the 
purest and noblest sentiments, Hindoos consider a 
man happy in proportion to the number of his chil- 
dren, which are the blessings of his house." 

Sir Thomas Munro, Sir Joseph Fayrer, Sir James 
Malcolm, Sir William Sleaman, and a host of wit- 
nesses have testified to the many and exceeding 
great merits of the Hindoo character, and with all 
they say I would, as one who spent a quarter of 

264 



SOCIAL REFORM 

a century in learning their languages and living 
amongst them, most heartily associate myself, while 
compelled, in justice to a people I respect and admire, 
to repudiate altogether the descriptions of them 
given by those who, for personal or political rea- 
sons, persistently and perpetually misrepresent them. 
The Dewan, or chief minister of Travancore, which 
the Census shows to be absolutely the most edu- 
cated, as it is the most beautiful and most prosper- 
ous, region in India, writes: "The Hindoo home is 
founded on religious principles, the father is guar- 
dian, preceptor, and patriarch, the woman is pro- 
tected by her male relations, nor, looking at other 
countries where celibacy is practised by women, can 
I consider universal marriage altogether a curse." 
This is true enough, and I remember what a Hindoo 
judge of one of the Indian High Courts said, speak- 
ing of the difference in the law as regards adultery, 
which in India is a criminal offence. He thought 
"the exigencies of modern European society" hardly 
allowed of a similarly severe view being taken in 
Europe of what the Hindoos regarded as a serious 
crime. 

The same Dewan of Travancore wrote, and Heaven 
knows how truly: "There is great misapprehension 
amongst European nations regarding the purdah, in 
which there is no slavery or tyranny, but as families 
rise in the world their females ask for the privileges 
of the zenana system." 

Then Mr. Crooke, who takes a very high place 
amongst those few who are qualified not by plat- 

265 



INDIA 

form orations or political agitation, but by personal 
knowledge of Hindoo life, particularly in Northern 
India, writes: "The Northern Indian peasant's life 
is one of ceaseless toil, but it enforces industry and 
temperance, and is compatible with a ready cheeri- 
ness which can find amusement in the veriest trifles. 
It would be a great mistake to suppose the wife of 
the peasant to be nothing more than a drudge. 
Nothing in the house is done without her knowl- 
edge and advice, and she is not perhaps worse off 
than her sister in a similar grade in other parts of 
the world." 

It is curious to find Abbe Dubois at the beginning, 
and Mr. Crooke at the end of last century, during 
the course of which no two men probably knew India 
better, saying in almost identical words that to 
imagine that the State can permanently improve 
the condition of the depressed classes is the dream 
of an enthusiast. Even a reduction in expenditure 
and a respite from perpetual increases of adminis- 
trative charges for the furtherance of progress in 
Western civilisation, whether needed or not, whether 
acceptable or not, whether suitable or not, would 
hardly affect the lowest classes to any great extent. 
For they do not now groan under an excessive salt- 
tax and a grinding land assessment. As has been 
shown in previous chapters, these are immemorial 
imposts which the British Government has pro- 
gressively and enormously reduced. Had they done 
less in the way of reduction and rigidly abstained 
from ever levying a new tax their popularity would 

266 



SOCIAL REFORM 

have been greater, and there would have been less 
occasion for the enemy to blaspheme. At present, 
although the total collected is less, it is impossible 
to deny that there are new cesses and taxes, the 
inventions of the foreigner. 

It is necessary to realise what the domestic life of 
the Hindoos actually is, before considering what 
steps should be taken to reform it, though such hesi- 
tation would not be tolerated by ardent and pro- 
fessional reformers, who would first of all abolish, 
and then study any customs which came within 
their restless and disturbing orbit. Nothing for 
instance is further from the fact than the assumption, 
universal in this country, that ladies behind the 
purdah — who are ignorantly presumed to be the 
majority of the women of India — are universally 
ill treated. 

How many a missionary or another has stood up 
in England and said: '*I returned and considered all 
the oppressions which are done under the sun, and 
beheld the tears of such as were oppressed, and on 
the side of their oppressors there was power, and 
they had no comforter." But hear on the other side 
Mr. Kipling: "Even purdah women have always 
been in touch with a thousand outside interests," or 
Mr. Crooke: "Women exert a wide influence and 
control, whether within or without zenanas, and 
little that goes on outside escapes their ears." Nor 
are they neglected by the Government, for they have 
in many cases special legal guardians in the Court 
of Wards. Mr. Dutt, too, writes: "Purdahs prevail 

267 



INDIA 

chiefly in the towns of Northern India, where the 
rule of the Moslems remained for centuries." 

Mr. S. E. J. Clarke, a man intimately acquainted 
with Hindoo life, writes of Bengal: "Women of the 
labouring and agricultural classes move freely about. 
Girls are by precept, instruction, example, and dis- 
cipline taught a high ideal of womanhood. Even 
purdah women go on pilgrimage, entertain and visit 
their friends, and see a great deal of the outer world. 
I deny that Hindoo women necessarily have a miser- 
able life, and must bear testimony to the happy 
side." Mr. Crooke writes: "There is an utter lack 
of seclusion except for women of the higher classes," 
who, as has been said, insist on it as an honour due 
to their rank. 

Everything tends to obscure the facts on this sub- 
ject. For instance, the success of Lady Dufferin's 
Fund, which has been great, and to which I endeav- 
oured in humble fashion to contribute, has not been 
chiefly amongst purdah women. The Amrita Bazaar 
Patrika wrote: "There is no objection whatever on 
the part of Hindoo or Mohammedan ladies to be 
treated by male doctors" — and this is, of course, a 
fact. A Hindoo lately wrote a book, called "Kama- 
la's Letters," in which one of the female characters 
says: "Purdah does not exist in Hindoo society 
except when wealth holds despotic sway. Where 
elsewhere it is found, it is due to the new products 
of English education, who, rising in rank and posi- 
tion under false notions, have taken to it." 

The same writer adds: 

268 



SOCIAL REFORM 

"Though it is the policy of our rulers not to 
interfere in our social and religious matters, it seems 
to me they do so when they choose. Much in our 
system which may appear unreasonable and intol- 
erable cannot be altered without interfering with the 
very character of our social fabric. There is no 
commoner fad of the hybrid products of English 
education than their twaddle about the cruelty of 
caste." 

The writer is believed to be a Brahmin of great 
attainments and high position in the South of India. 

Amongst the Mohammedans the case as regards 
seclusion is, of course, different, but even with them 
the whole question is, and always has been, and no 
doubt always will be, the subject of monumental 
misrepresentation. 

The extent to which Christian teaching has af- 
fected Hindoo domestic life can hardly be regarded 
as great. Keshub Chunder Sen protested against 
"the denationalisation so general amongst native 
converts, who abandon the manners and customs of 
their country, forgetting that Christ was an Asiatic." 

Miss Noble, who has become a Hindoo and has 
written interesting and valuable books concerning 
her new co-religionists, is as good an authority upon 
Hindoo social life as Indian writers who have become 
Christians, and she says: "From my own experience, 
I can refute the charges of oppression of Indian 
women often levelled against the Hindoos. Such a 
crime is less common and less brutal in India than 
in younger countries. Indian national customs need 

269 



INDIA 

no apology." That, I confess, is my own view, but, 
as has been pointed out, thirty years ago all the 
EngHsh-educated were, by profession, at any rate, 
reformers, though during the last seventeen years a 
strong Hindoo revival has set in, the force of which 
is not yet spent. It is not for us to take any excep- 
tion to this change of front, though it is due to the 
fact that the reformers soon realised the hopelessness 
of attempting to obtain the sympathy of the masses 
on any other terms, and we may well say, as the 
Novoe Vremya wrote of the Russians in China: "We 
are strong in these regions in proportion as we do not 
interfere with the religious convictions of the native 
population. " 

It is a curious fact, which Dr. Bhandarkar amongst 
others has noticed, that the caste and race spirit 
seems to increase with the spread of education, which 
indeed the agitators, w^ith accustomed exaggeration, 
say has produced a solid Hindoo nationality, spread- 
ing from the Himalayas to Cape Coranum, and from 
Kurachi to Chittagong. 

The doctor says: "In my early days all classes 
joined in a public movement. Now Hindoos, Mo- 
hammedans, and Parsees act independently, as do 
even separate castes. There is greater estrangement 
than existed before social reform was thought of." 
Significant proof of strength of Hindoo feeling was 
afforded when the lawyer and Babu classes of 
Southern India tried in vain to rush through the 
Legislative Council the Gains of Learning Bill, 
which would have proved a powerful solvent of the 

270 



SOCIAL REFORM 

caste system and of the Hindoo home with its joint 
earnings. 

Abbe Dubois believed caste "to be the best part 
of Hindoo legislation, solely owing to which India 
did not lapse into a state of barbarism, and owing to 
which she preserved and perfected arts and sciences, 
while other nations remained in the same condition." 
Eighty years later. Sir John Strachey urged that 
between castes, customs, and religions no line can 
be drawn. 

Novels regarding Indian life are now not infre- 
quently written, and generally a purpose lurks within 
the narrative, in which fact and theory often fight a 
hard battle. For instance, Mr. Dutt in his "Lake 
of Palms," an admirable and most interesting pic- 
ture of Bengali life, makes one of his Hindoo char- 
acters say "that the remarriage of a widow is a sin 
and a scandal, a madness beyond thought," while 
he represents a pious family as sanctioning such a 
marriage by the advice of a holy man, who finds no 
objection in the Vedas! Similarly "social boycott 
has lost its horrors in India," in spite of which it 
seems "women of good birth and family dare not ask 
the married widow to their feasts and ceremonies." 

The average respectable Hindoo would regard 
with contempt and disgust such an advertisement 
as the following, which is a fair specimen of many 
which appear in newspapers favoured by the agi- 
tators and reformers: "Wanted — A young virgin 
widow to be married to a bachelor of twenty-four, of 
high prospects, fair and good-looking, object being 

271 



INDIA 

reformation. Full particulars and personal inter- 
view, after approval of photo. Proper party only 
need apply." Enforced widowhood, as Sir Richard 
Temple long ago pointed out, *' is not nearly so gen- 
eral as is made out by those who would deduce a 
moral from Indian manners for the glorification of 
the habits of the Christian." In Hindustan proper, 
perhaps 25 per cent, of the population prohibit and 
75 per cent, permit remarriage. 

Sir Madava Rao, the famous Indian statesman, 
testified to the same effect. He was an advanced 
thinker and reformer, though he died before reform 
became associated with agitation and disaffection. 
He considered the life of a Hindoo girl "as happy 
as that of a bird or a bee," and wrote: "Many 
writers on Hindoo social reform have not clearly 
understood the existing system, which is the product 
of long development, nor accurately compared it 
with other systems, before underrating the advan- 
tages, and exaggerating the disadvantages, of the 
Indian system. The great majority of the people 
who retain their religious beliefs and social usages 
would prefer non-representation to misrepresenta- 
tion, by those who have given up those beliefs and 
usages." 

These are words of profound wisdom, and the old 
statesman might have added that his own people 
are the most charitable in the round world. 

Not only do Hindoos support all their poor rela- 
tions, but they very generally help pauper scholars. 
Whether it is to the public advantage that such 

272 



SOCIAL REFORM 

should be enabled to pursue their studies is indeed 
doubtful, but the Hindoos think so and say: 

"Heaven's gate is near the sinner 
Who gives the humble scholar dinner." 

Nor in England, at any rate in Wales, is a similar 
belief unknown. 

"Charity our household divinity" runs the family 
motto of the Maharajas of Travancore, and it may 
be said in varying degree of all his Highness's fel- 
low-countrymen. Such charity is universal and all- 
embracing, so that it is only when crops have failed 
over a large area for several successive seasons that 
the Indian Famine Prevention Code is brought into 
operation to afford that outdoor and indoor relief 
which in Europe is necessary even in normal seasons. 
Perhaps no trait in the character of the Hindoos, 
who possess so many admirable qualities, is more 
attractive than their charity, but it must be admitted 
that what is all-embracing must necessarily be, and 
indeed is, indiscriminate, and possibly demoralising. 
The able-bodied beggar is relieved as readily as one 
incapacitated from earning his own living, and, of 
course, feeding a Brahmin possesses special merits, 
no matter how well able he may be to feed himself. 
It is true of hundreds of thousands in India that 
they could work, but to beg are not ashamed. 

Such being the Hindoo home, and such being its 
occupants, few thinking men will agree with those 
who maintain that India needs a complete upheaval, 
so that out of social chaos a new and happier dispen- 

273 



INDIA 

sation may arise. On the contrary, the cure for such 
ills as exist must necessarily be exceedingly slow. 
Education must spread so far and so wide that 
the cry for reform must come from the fields and the 
workshops of the artisans, and not only from the 
lawyer's office and the educationalist's study. Not 
till then will the time arrive for sweeping changes. 
Reforms which will probably sooner or later come 
to pass are these: Intermarriage between subdivi- 
sions of castes, the widening of the circle from which 
husbands and wives may be taken, voluntary renun- 
ciation of the habit of marrying infants and of 
children unable to earn the means of subsistence, 
reduction of expenses in the celebration of cere- 
monies and the introduction of some discrimination 
into the dispensation of charity. But without any of 
the reforms the Hindoo system is one of which there 
is little cause to be ashamed. 



274 



CHAPTER XI 

ECONOMIC POLICY 

ONE cause of the unrest is the belief strongly 
held by three-fourths of the educated 
classes that the economic policy of the 
Indian Government is radically unsound and grossly 
unfair to India. They read and quote Bradlaugh, 
Digby, and Naoroji, and maintain that the so-called 
"drain" to England, and other results of our eco- 
nomic policy, are the real causes of the poverty of the 
people, of famine, and indirectly of plague. Here 
again it is eminently desirable that some authorita- 
tive pronouncement of the economic policy of the 
Government of India should be available, a memo- 
randum showing what it is and what are its results, 
but none such exists, and even those who desire light 
know not in what direction to seek it. Sir William 
Hunter, as usual, is pressed into the service of the 
detractors of British government in India. Mr. 
O'Donnell circulated in the House of Commons on 
the occasion of the last Budget debate a memoran- 
dum called "Rack Taxing in Rural India," in which 
he gave a sensational quotation from Hunter to the 
effect that the "Government assessment does not 
leave enough food to the cultivator to support him- 

275 



INDIA 

self and his family throughout the year." If Hunter 
had said this it would not have much mattered, for 
probably there has never been an Indian civil ser- 
vant who spent so much time in England and in 
headquarter oflEices, and so little in rural India, as 
he did, but as a fact he said nothing of the kind. He 
was writing of a bill relating to four districts only of 
one Presidency, and of these he said: *'The funda- 
mental difficulty of bringing relief to the Deccan 
peasantry, as stated by the special judge entrusted with 
this tasky is therefore," and then follow the words 
Mr. O'Donnell attributes to him, and he goes on to 
say: "7/ the Government assessment reduces the 
cultivator to this condition," and so on. Such is 
quotation for the purpose of discrediting the British 
Government. 

The use made of what Sir W. Hunter wrote recalls 
another and far more serious misrepresentation of 
an able and humane minute penned by Lord Salis- 
bury when Secretary of State for India. Who has 
not read in the works of the anti-British writers, 
"India must be bled," the odious admission, as it is 
called, of one of Britain's greatest statesmen? Now 
Lord Salisbury in 1875 was very anxious to relieve 
the Indian cultivator as far as he could, and in 
a minute on the land-tax wrote: *'So far as it is 
possible to change the Indian fiscal system, it is 
desirable that the cultivator should pay a smaller 
proportion of the whole national charge. It is not a 
thrifty policy to draw the mass of revenue from 
rural districts, where capital is scarce, sparing the 

276 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

towns, where it is often redundant. As India must be 
bled, the lancet should be directed to the parts where 
the blood is congested or sujB&cient, not to those 
which are already feeble from want of it." 

Of these humane, sensible, and statesmanlike 
words Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji makes use of four, 
"India must be bled." Then considering for a mo- 
ment Mr. Naoroji's writings, which are regarded as 
a kind of gospel by young Bengal, his "Poverty of 
India" is a fearsome work of nearly 700 pages, writ- 
ten, as the Indians say, without bundobast. True, 
he prefaces most of his indictments by a profession 
of faith in the British, but this expression can only 
be looked upon like the Frenchman's '''Que messieurs 
les assassins commengent/* for he does not scruple 
to say "that British rule has reduced the bulk of 
the population to extreme poverty, destitution, and 
degradation, that it is a new despotism of civilisa- 
tion, resembling the murder effected by a clever and 
unscrupulous surgeon, who draws all his victim's 
blood and leaves no scar," and he does not hesitate 
to describe the English as "the most disastrous and 
destructive of the foreign invaders of India." In 
denouncing the home charges, which, no doubt, 
should be reduced, as I have said elsewhere, to the 
lowest possible figure, he leaves out of account the 
fact that without the home charges there could be 
no British Government in India. He says nothing 
of remittances for interest on loans raised for the 
development of the country towards which the 
Indians will not subscribe themselves, and of allow- 

277 



INDIA 

ances for Englishmen who have spent their hves and 
health in India. When he calculates the loss she 
suffers by the excess of her exports over her imports 
he says nothing of some of the most flourishing 
countries in the world, which in this behalf are in 
the same position, or of the approaching ruin of 
England, as some folk predict, because her imports 
exceed her exports. It is not serious treatment of 
a difficult problem to add up the imports for a series 
of years, subtract them from the exports, and call 
the balance the life-blood drained from India. The 
greater part of these charges represent interest on 
capital invested in our Eastern Empire in repro- 
ductive works, to the great advantage of that Empire, 
and of its working classes, and most of all of those 
weaned thereby from petty agriculture, to which 
alone the masses of the people can ordinarily look 
for a livelihood. It is difficult to criticise seriously 
a writer who says: "Foreign trade adds nothing to 
the wealth of the world, and not a single atom of 
money is added to the existing wealth of India by 
internal trade." And what does this profound 
economist recommend to right a world in which 
apparently everything is wrong? The further em- 
ployment of natives in the public service! So he 
has got no further than the failed B.A., in the study 
of economics, and it is not wonderful that he should 
be regarded by that individual as his guide in the 
sphere of politics and economics. Apparently also, 
when Indians are employed in offices now held by 
European civil servants, he would, regardless of the 

278 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

cost, give them pay and pensions at the rate drawn 
by the ahen administrators. Of course Mr. Dadab- 
hai Naoroji writes from very Httle knowledge of the 
Indian people, he being himself a Parsee whose life 
has been spent in England. Still, it is extraordinary 
that a man should be accepted as an economic author- 
ity who does not see that the best hope for India lies 
in developing her resources; in encouraging her tea 
industry which pays higher wages than obtained 
before, and so tends to raise wages all round; in 
encouraging the cotton and jute mills, gold and coal 
mines, and in fact in developing that internal and 
external trade which he thinks adds nothing to the 
wealth of the nation, but to which alone others, no 
less anxious than he is to see India prosperous, 
look for the further improvement of her patient and 
estimable population. 

The case of the bleeding India school teems with 
contradictions, and while Mr. Naoroji argues in his 
classical works that India has become poorer because 
the prices of Indian staples have not risen, and bases 
an immense fabric or fabrication upon this assump- 
tion, the Congress journals cry out because the wages 
of agricultural and other labour have not advanced 
pari passu with the rise in prices, and their premise 
that prices have risen is of course correct, though 
they suppress the fact, easily proven by reference to 
old records, that there has been a more than propor- 
tionate rise in the rate of wages. 

Next amongst the prophets comes (the late) Mr. 
William Digby, who revels in statistics regarding 

279 



INDIA 

the bleeding of India, and calculates the amount 
extracted by the economic drain in the nineteenth 
century, with the greatest precision, at £4,187,922,- 
732. Like Mr. Naoroji, he holds that the influx of 
imports is of little or no value, while the loss of 
exports is a fatal wound, and he describes our rule 
as "naked and unashamed exploitation, outrageous 
plunder, a mockery and a curse to hundreds of 
millions of British subjects." To prove this rather 
comprehensive conclusion he makes elaborate com- 
parisons of the condition of the natives of India 
with that of the inhabitants of European states. 
Had Japan, China, Arabia, or some other Eastern 
nation been taken as a standard, something of some 
value might have been evolved, but Mr. Digby 
proves too much in showing that all Indians, for 
instance the powerful Punjaubi, a far finer man than 
the average Englishman, is habitually starved. He 
makes much use of the Russian peasant, but I have 
lived wuth Russian peasants. I am a Russian inter- 
preter myself, and I know that if the Russian has 
ten times the income of the Indian, his board and 
lodging costs him several times ten times as much, 
and that the Indians get more comfort from their 
smaller resources. Space will not allow me here to 
show how ways and means in the East and West 
actually compare when considered with elementary 
understanding, or to deal with Indian conditions and 
Indian critics at length on this matter. So much 
that is absolutely contrary to fact is taken for 
granted, such frequent reiteration calls for such 

280 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

emphatic refutation, that considerable space is 
required for overthrowing the structure, albeit it is 
founded on sand. 

It is, however, unnecessary to repeat what has been 
said in previous chapters to refute the argument that 
the British invented famine, which on the contrary 
they have almost abolished. Mutually destructive 
propositions are as common as over-confident and 
unsupported assertions, and the numbers habitually 
in want of food are calculated to have increased 
from 40,000,000, itself the mere conjecture of one 
individual of no special authority, to 100,000,000, 
while elsewhere it is urged that owing to British 
maladministration the population has not suffi- 
ciently increased. Sir Salar Jung, who raised the land 
revenue in Hyderabad by 260 per cent., is praised, 
while the English, who in the same period effected 
an increase of 25 per cent., as Mr. Digby says, are 
condemned. The profits of the industries are said 
to go to English capitalists, but does Indian labour 
take no toll on these profits .^^ The superior merits 
of the administration of Indian states are extolled, 
but their complete failure to feed their people in 
famine days is suppressed. 

When family after family is shown to earn too 
little to support life, it is evident to anyone with 
any knowledge of the country that the cost of living 
has been pitched too high, and supplementary 
sources of income have been ignored. Then official 
results are repudiated because based upon official 
figures, but it is an irrefragable merit of Digby's 

281 



INDIA 

own conclusions that they are based upon such 
figures ! 

Then in regard to Bengal, the permanent set- 
tlement of which Mr. Digby, like Mr. Dutt and 
Mr. Naoroji, is bound to praise — for are not the 
landlords of Bengal the supporters of the Congress? — 
he finds that in that province the average income 
falls most below the ofiicial estimate. This is very 
likely the case, though it would take a great deal to 
prove, but if true it entirely shatters the creed that 
permanently settled Bengal is exceptionally pros- 
perous. 

It is hardly to be expected that a writer who 
ignores the most elementary principles of economics 
should think worthy of mention the legislation for 
the emancipation of the peasant from the clutches 
of the money-lender, the extension of irrigation, the 
establishment of co-operative agricultural credit, 
and the industrial eminence of Bombay. In point 
of fact, it is mere clap-trap to say the average Indian 
got M. a day in 1850, l^d. in 1880, and ^d. in 1900, 
and contempt, as I suppose, has prevented the Gov- 
ernment from exposing such nonsense. No one 
knows what the average was in 1850, and it certainly 
has not fallen since 1900. The Government has at 
length, after an elaborate inquiry, found the average 
income per head to be 30 rupees, and reasons have 
been given elsewhere for thinking that this is as 
fair an estimate as is likely to be made. 

Mr. F. J. Atkinson, whose training and experi- 
ence specially fit him to deal with Indian statistics, 

282 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

calculated that between 1875 and 1895 the agricul- 
tural income increased from 26 rupees to 35 rupees, 
or 39 per cent.; the non-agricultural income from 
28 rupees to 34 rupees, or 18 per cent.; and, as these 
two classes were 97 per cent, of the population, that 
the average annual income of the masses had risen 
from 27 rupees to 35 rupees, or 28 per cent. Taking 
into account the remaining classes, he made the 
income of all three sections to be from 30 rupees 
to 39 rupees, or an increase in the average income 
of 29 per cent. These figures are worthy of great 
respect, though their author does not claim for them 
scientific accuracy, nor, though an expert, is he 
capable, like Mr. Digby, of calculating a century's 
drain within twenty shillings. Lord Cromer in 
his day estimated the average income at 27 rupees, 
as against the 30 rupees of Lord Curzon's Govern- 
ment, so that there is not, when the difficulty and 
complexity of the subject is considered, so great a 
disparity as might be expected. 

None of the chief detractors of British rule have 
explained why, if the land is universally rackrented, 
it happens that it sells for several times the assess- 
ment, of which there is proof. Again, it was the 
same Sir William Hunter, who saw so little of life 
in India, who was so misquoted by Mr. O'Donnell, who 
dogmatically asserted in 1880 that 40,000,000 of In- 
dians went through life on insufficient food, an utterly 
unsupported, and therefore mischievous, statement. 

More light is thrown upon facts by one entry from 
Mr. Digby's peasants' authentic family budgets 

283 



INDIA 

than from all his invective and bewildering statistics. 
The cultivator of 4| acres provides in his budget an 
expenditure "of Sd. a month for the small goddess 
and the local ghost." Starving men do not spend 
much money on ghosts and goddesses. 

Mr. Digby complains that the British have drained 
away all the capital. Mr. Justice Ranade, however, 
who is an authority accepted by the Congress school, 
says: "There is no lack of capital in the country," 
and if no Indian can exist on less than 30 rupees per 
head per annum for food, which is, of course, absurd, 
how can Mr. Digby be right in saying elsewhere that 
"they can exist, if existence it can be called, on 
almost nothing"? Mr. Digby 's figures, in fact, are 
compiled with the utmost levity, and his calculations 
of the revenue of India are based on the assumption 
that the land revenue is a certain proportion of the 
gross produce, which he lays down with confidence, 
if without knowledge. The lower the land revenue, 
the poorer the Indian people must appear, accord- 
ing to his method of calculation. It would be easy 
to show that the agricultural produce of the country 
is double the figure at which he assesses it, but of 
course it is not from statistics, but from observation 
in the field, that the condition of the peasants can 
be really estimated; nor does Mr. Digby seem to 
grasp the fact that the ordinary peasant carries on 
a great deal of his traffic by barter or in kind. In 
fact, he, like Mr. Naoroji, has no actual knowledge 
of Indian rural life, which is not obtained by editors 
whose Indian experience is confined to an office in 

284 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

the city of Madras. It is possible that Mr. Naoroji 
may be acquainted with one of the languages spoken 
in Bombay other than English, but it is certain he 
has had little or no opportunity of using such knowl- 
edge in his life, and Mr. Digby, as I know, had no 
knowledge of the vernacular tongues. 

No man with any practical experience of the 
country would, like Mr. Digby, base an estimate of 
the wealth of India upon the transparently absurd 
assumption that the gross produce of "golden" Ben- 
gal does not amount to £l, or 15 rupees, an acre. 
Yet this estimate is accepted in innumerable essays, 
articles, and pamphlets, and, like any stick, is good 
enough for the British Government. 

If this method of calculation were followed, it 
would be easy to prove that no person in England 
had less than £45 a year, and in referring to land 
revenue as taxation Mr. Digby ignores altogether 
the fact that where the land is held directly from 
Government, the land-tax includes what here we 
call rent, and should be compared with the total 
burden of the land in this country. Mr. O'Donnell 
repeats the same error, though he must be aware 
that the two charges are not in the same category. 

Mr. R. C. Dutt, who arrives at much the same 
conclusions, is a critic of a different class to Messrs. 
Digby and Naoroji, but he is equally unsparing in 
condemnation of British rule, and of the civil service, 
of which he was a member, and he, too, does not 
hesitate to make sweeping statements as if they 
were facts of universal acceptance. 

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INDIA 

For instance: "The poverty of the Indian popula- 
tion is unparalleled in any civilised country." Upon 
what travel and inquiry is this statement based, and 
what is it worth, unless based upon comparative 
knowledge? "The famines of the latter part of the 
nineteenth century are unexampled in extent and 
intensity in ancient and modern times." The few 
histories written by Indians prove this statement is 
altogether contrary to the fact, and I have in previ- 
ous chapters sufficiently dealt with this monstrous 
misstatement: "The finances of the country are 
not properly administered.'* If the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer is a good authority, one may ven- 
ture to quote Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who said 
that "the finances of India were not only better 
administered, but in a more satisfactory condition 
than those of Great Britain." Then, "India in the 
eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as 
well as a great agricultural country." True, she 
had manufactures, though we have yet to learn 
that she produced more than she does at present, 
but she was always, and still remains, mainly agri- 
cultural. Certain of her industries were, and one 
industry still is, in some respects, subservient to the 
same industry in Britain, but in consequence of 
British rule she has been endowed with many other 
new industries, which employ at least as much 
labour. It is impossible to deny that prohibitive 
tariffs were imposed at one time in England upon 
competing Indian manufactures; but it is not in 
any way proved that the balance of profit was not 

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ECONOMIC POLICY 

with India in the whole transaction, or that other 
European races, one of which was bound to acquire 
her, would not have imposed equal or heavier tariffs. 

Then "the land-tax is not only excessive, but, 
what is worse, it is fluctuating and uncertain in many 
provinces." But, as has been shown in previous 
chapters, it is immensely less than that collected 
by our predecessors in title. Of course, Bengal the 
permanently settled is said to be more prosperous 
than Madras and Bombay, but if Mr. Dutt has had 
any experience of these other provinces, so as to be 
able to compare conditions, he has omitted to say 
so in his book. His official services, like those of 
the other chief supporters of the Congress in Parlia- 
ment, were rendered in Bengal, the home of the 
Congress, and the place of origin of anti-British agi- 
tation, and he takes no notice of the fact that it 
is in Bengal that the British Government has chiefly 
had to intervene to protect the tenant from the land- 
lord, and he has never had the opportunities enjoyed 
by civil servants in other provinces of seeing the 
permanently settled system and the ryot-wari sys- 
tem working side by side. 

He does not scruple to say that "a special law, 
called the slave law by the people of India" (query, 
what people, and in what language ?) *' still exists for 
providing labourers for the tea planters in Assam, 
ignorant men and women, bound down by penal 
clauses to work in tea gardens for a number of years, 
for whom the utmost endeavours have failed to 
secure adequate pay." I was a member of the 

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INDIA 

Select Committee of the Legislative Council which 
examined this law, and from personal knowledge 
can contradict the whole of this statement, but per- 
haps it would be sufficient to refer to the Census 
Report, which exposes this foolish charge. I have 
referred to the matter before, and wages in tea 
gardens are above normal rates, which this industry 
has thus been the means of raising. 

Of course revenue and magisterial functions should 
be separated, but enough of that elsewhere. 

As an instance of Mr. Dutt's treatment of his- 
torical subjects may be mentioned his account of 
the Black Hole tragedy: "Siraj-ud-Doulah's pris- 
oners died one hot summer night." Now I do not 
think it proved that this tragedy was ordered by 
the Nawab, but this is a strange account of a cruel 
outrage. 

Again, "the reign of Queen Victoria has not 
admitted the people of India to any share in the 
control and direction of the administration of their 
own affairs." 

Elsewhere I have quoted Babu Bepin Chandra 
Pal to the effect that "we," the Indians, "now govern 
India." The fact that, except as regards something 
under one thousand appointments, the whole public 
service is manned by natives is not worth Mr. Dutt's 
attention. It would be interesting to know where 
history taught the lesson "that it is impossible to 
govern a country in the interests of the people with- 
out bestowing on that people some measure of self- 
government and representation." History teaches 

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ECONOMIC POLICY 

the exactly opposite conclusion, and self-government 
and representation obtains to-day amongst a mere 
fraction of the inhabitants of the world, nor does 
the system seem to work well at present in regions 
to which it is being extended in Europe and Asia. 

The alliance between the Congress and the social- 
ists in Britain will be severely strained if Mr. Dutt 
expresses the matured opinion of the former, "that 
the soil was private property in India, as amongst 
all other civilised nations," but the statement is, if 
true, not in India by any means the whole truth. 

Mr. Dutt's work teems with allegations which are 
erroneous and unsustainable: "Only those who pay 
light rents are prosperous"; yet the fact is notorious 
that the districts in which rents are lightest have 
been in times of scarcity most seriously affected, the 
obvious reason being that there the land is poorest. 
The Indian cultivator is indeed worthy of all praise, 
but to single out his "habits of prudence" for eulogy 
is to indulge in untimely sarcasm. 

Mr. Dutt's contentions regarding assessments are 
noticed in Chapter III. He finds that the extension 
of cultivation has not made the nation any more 
prosperous — a position which can hardly need seri- 
ous refutation — and that India is the poorest coun- 
try on earth. Has he then visited all the countries 
on earth — and are statistics in respect of all such 
available? Has he compared them — or are his 
conclusions the fruits of omniscience? If so let the 
claim be made, and then ordinary mortals will know 
how to deal with the revelations. Meanwhile, like 

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INDIA 

any other Congressman, he combines the out-and- 
out advocacy of democracy and reform with the 
stoutest possible defence of landlordism and aris- 
tocracy, at any rate in Bengal. In one respect, 
however, he throws over the tenets of his school 
and of its ex-official, now anti-official, supporters 
and admits that there is no strong feeling in India 
against the opium monopoly. 

One fact to be remembered in dealing with the 
writings of Messrs. Dutt, Naoroji, and Digby is 
this — that statistics are wanting for the first half 
of last century, that the first regular Census was 
taken in 1872, and that the Statistical Department 
at Calcutta was not created till 1880. Never was 
so vast a superstructure raised upon such pure con- 
jecture as the case against the British Government 
according to the Congress, which now has the sup- 
port of the British socialists. 

The opportunity of attacking British rule at a 
time when opposition was displayed in India was 
too good for Mr. Hyndman to lose, and he returned 
to the charge on his old war-horse, frequently foun- 
dered, but still propped up with the same bad argu- 
ments and sham statistics. Famines have become 
more frequent, except in native states; the death- 
rate is rising, and it is true that the record is reach- 
ing something like a normal figure for Asia; poverty 
increases; the exports exceed the imports; the im- 
ports are dangerously low; the land assessment is 
raised; Mr. Digby 's figures are true figures; land-tax 
and economic rent are confounded; the Indian peo- 

290 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

pies weep the tears of such as are oppressed, and on 
the side of their oppressors is power; but they have, 
other than Mr. Hyndman, the Congress, the Bengali 
Babus, and the Poona Brahmins, no comforter. Of 
the famines in anti-British days I have spoken, and 
of the IJ millions who died in 1899-1900 most came 
from native states when past relief to die on British 
relief works. 

To the confusion of Mr. Hyndman the last Census 
showed an increase of 3.9 per cent, in the population 
of British India and a loss of 6.6 per cent, in native 
states, the decline being greatest in Baroda and the 
states of Central India, Rajputana, and of Bombay, 
in which the failure of crops was as severe in the last 
famine as it was in British India, while measures of 
prevention and relief were by no means so compre- 
hensive and efficient. I have pointed out these 
indisputable facts to Mr. Hyndman, but he returns 
to the charge. Facts are no use to him, and he 
continues to think the native states are best admin- 
istered. No one can be more anxious to agree with 
him so far than an ex-Resident of Travancore and 
Cochin, but all native states are not as they are, 
and the truth must be told. 

As to the assessment, that subject has been suffi- 
ciently treated elsewhere, and the figures regarding 
the death-rate only began to be approximately accu- 
rate in quite recent years. Competent authorities 
calculate the rates before 1880 at about 35 per mille, 
and the figure now is 33, including the loss from 
the plague epidemic. The folly of accepting 24 per 

291 



INDIA 

mille for 1884 is apparent when the fact is remem- 
bered that few European countries at that time had 
so low a death-rate. 

Upon the question of the drain Mr. Hyndman, 
relying on the conjectural figures of Mr. Dutt, 
omitted necessary deductions, which reduced the 
excess of exports over imports from 30 to about 10 
millions, and grossly exaggerated, indeed more than 
doubled, the amounts paid to Europeans as salaries 
out of Indian revenues. He treats, and indeed most 
writers on the Congress side treat, the figures of 
Messrs. Dutt, Digby, and Naoroji as if they came 
down from heaven, whence indeed they might have 
come, so little relation have they to the facts on 
earth. 

It must be remembered that none of the papers 
exposing these figures, none of the letters published 
from time to time in the Times, and holding the 
field, are ever republished in the native press, which 
immediately repeats all over India any statement, 
however false and misleading, made to discredit 
British administration. The drain, in fact, is an 
imaginary monster, and in other countries where 
the like phenomenon exists it is regarded as a proof 
of prosperity. Everything that goes out is paid for, 
and in such commodities — for instance, cotton goods 
and bullion — as the country most wants. Had 
capital been raised in India for her development, 
the interest would have been three times that paid 
to Britain, and as a result of the drain there are 
hundreds of golden streams flowing from the new 

292 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

trades and industries developed by the foreign 
capital and the foreign agents. The Statesman's 
Year-Book shows that in the United States and in 
Argentine the exports exceed the imports by 74 and 
15 millions respectively. Yet they are superlatively 
prosperous countries, while Persia, Turkey, and 
China show excess of imports over exports, ranging 
from 1| to 14 J millions, and they are not exactly 
in the van of the world of progress. Suppose India 
ceased to export so largely, she would in proportion 
be paid less, and her peoples would accordingly 
suffer. It is they that get the money or goods paid in 
return, and not the Government. All the raw prod- 
ucts, except tea, coffee, and indigo, are produced 
from native sources, and with native money. What 
would India do with her excess of crops and products 
if she did not export them, for there is a great surplus 
even in famine grass, famine being dearth of money, 
not, from an all-Indian point of view and in these 
days of extended communications, of grain. Surely, 
that this surplus exists is a proof of the wealth, not 
of the poverty, of India. Trade is not the result 
of dark intrigue between the Indian Government 
and the British and foreign nations. The fact is, 
India pays no tribute to Britain, and her present 
prosperity and future salvation depend on the devel- 
opment of the industries she owes chiefly to Brit- 
ish enterprise, often, like the tea industry, too little 
rewarded and too successfully attacked by faddists 
and theorisers. 
The Labour question in Assam arose entirely from 

293 



INDIA 

the action of the Chief Commissioner, Mr. (now 
Sir H.) Cotton, whose view that the coohes in the 
tea gardens were underpaid was not shared by the 
Assam Commission, or probably in any quarter 
other than the Bengah Babus and agitators, who saw 
an opportunity of depreciating a British enterprise, 
to the benefit of which to Assam, and other parts 
of India, eloquent testimony is borne by the last 
Census Report, by the condition of the labourers 
themselves, and by the rate of the wages they enjoy. 
Questions regarding labour in India and other 
parts of Asia have lately received unusual prominence 
owing to the Chinese Labour question, which has 
excited so great a feeling throughout England, where 
it is believed on all hands that such labour competes 
with that of white men from Britain, owing to the 
first strike which has happened on the East Indian 
Railway and owing to the problem of Indian immi- 
gration into the Transvaal and the Pacific Coast of 
America. It is hopeless to expect dispassionate con- 
sideration of this complicated and, for England, most 
uncomfortable question, until the irreconcilables 
learn, as they would learn from actual experience, 
that Asiatic labour does not compete with skilled 
white labour, but provides for the latter a larger 
field. In countries with a tropical climate white 
men are unable and unwilling to perform the actual 
drudgery, which in such cases falls to the lot of the 
Asiatic immigrant. If they could do this work, they 
would waste their time and lower the rate of wages 
by so doing, their proper function being that which 

294 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

they always perform wherever white and coloured 
labour are concurrently employed — namely, that 
of inspecting and supervising, which is necessarily 
a more highly paid and more congenial duty than 
actual manual labour. 

The cry for the expulsion of Asiatics from the 
Pacific Coast is due to fear of competition in labour, 
to ignorance of, or to perverse blindness to, the fact 
that the enormous capabilities of a land flowing with 
milk and honey await just the plentiful supply of 
unskilled labour which the Asiatics can, and Euro- 
peans cannot, supply, and to failure to appreciate 
the fact that the more Asiatics are employed the 
more work there will be for white men. The fear 
of Japan and the racial feeling of dislike is indus- 
triously fanned by the Yellow Press, but it is clear, 
and it is only right, that the people of the Pacific 
Coast must acquire their experience and settle this 
question for themselves, while the Mikado's Gov- 
ernment manifests no desire to force Japanese immi- 
gration upon an unwilling continent. 

In the Transvaal, excitement has been raised to 
fever pitch by the passing of the Registration Law. 
In Natal, Indian coolies are allowed either to renew 
their indentures upon expiry, to return to India, or 
to remain in Natal subject to a special poll-tax, 
which, in the absence of registration, they gener- 
ally escape. Large numbers, however, of the super- 
abundant coolies have crossed over to the Transvaal, 
and without a system of passports and registration 
the Transvaal Government cannot regulate such im- 

295 



INDIA 

migration. Hence the new law, to carry out which 
it is also necessary to provide against transference 
of passports, which are usually passed on to others 
by their original holders, who have either died or 
left the country. Hence also the necessity for iden- 
tification by finger prints, which has been in force 
some years, although it has been represented as a 
new and cruel refinement of oppression on the part 
of the Transvaal Government. A committee was 
formed in England to conduct an agitation and to 
rouse public feeling upon the subject. Of this com- 
mittee I was a member, but I resigned, because it 
appeared to me and still appears to me obvious that 
the Transvaal Government must have and will 
have its own way in regard to this matter, and that 
it knows its own business much better than we do 
in England; that if interference is practised in regard 
to such details as those of immigration laws, such 
laws cannot be properly administered, and the con- 
sequence will be that Indians, who have already 
become a rock of offence, will be utterly cast out, 
like an abominable branch, to their own disadvan- 
tage and to the loss of the Transvaal, where they 
are a valuable and prosperous asset. Surely it is 
time to admit the undisputable fact that there is 
an ineradicable prejudice against the introduction of 
Orientals into our Colonies, except upon such terms 
as the Colonies themselves lay down. It is an affair 
for themselves alone, and no good can come of 
accusing them of being hard-hearted, arrogant, and 
unjust, epithets in exchange for which they might 

296 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

readily and with equal justice return others, such as 
ignorant, unpractical, and sentimental. Already the 
Indians in Natal exceed in number the Europeans, 
whom, if they were enfranchised, they would out- 
vote. A great deal too much is made of the plea 
that the injustice, for so it must appear to those who 
hold that one law is possible all over a world-wide 
empire, must prejudice our position in India. It 
will probably do nothing of the sort. Indians are 
accustomed to be governed, and are perfectly well 
aware, from long experience, that there are some 
Colonies to which they are allowed to emigrate, 
and others to which emigration is forbidden. They 
are also practical people, who realise that while they 
are in a country they must submit to its laws, and 
the class of Indian which emigrates has made up its 
mind to put up with any resulting inconvenience. 

No one can feel more keenly than I do how 
unfair it is that our highly civilised, law-abiding, and 
humane Indian fellow-subjects cannot settle at pleas- 
ure in any particular part of the so-called British 
Empire, but since that empire consists in a great 
measure of a loose aggregate of self-governing com- 
munities it is far better to acknowledge the fact than 
to persevere in petty coercion and moral suasion, 
which are doomed from the outset to failure, and can 
only exasperate Colonies which know how to and 
mean to manage their own affairs. The arguments 
used by those who conduct this agitation are manu- 
factured for the occasion. The kind of political and 
social equalities for which they are working has never 

297 



INDIA 

existed in India between caste and caste, tribe and 
tribe, people and people, nor does the British Gov- 
ernment practise, nor will it ever practise, unless it 
be in a brain storm, the principles which the com- 
mittee is now seeking to impose upon an unwilling 
colony. It is, of course, most deplorable that 2,000 
Hindoos should have landed last year at Vancouver 
and have been subjected to inhospitality and ill- 
treatment, but it is impossible to dictate to white 
men in any part of the world what shall be their 
attitude in respect to brown men or yellow men. 
How would the English bear to be coerced into 
accepting Chinese labour? It is not a question even 
open to argument. The unrest in India has nothing 
to do with it, and the Bengali Babus and the Poona 
Brahmins, who are prepared to use this or any other 
argument, care no more what becomes of the coolies 
from India than they do what becomes of coolies 
in India or of the British Empire. It is notorious, 
let Mr. Meredith Townsend testify amongst other 
authorities, that feelings of pity and sympathy do 
not exist amongst Orientals, though, like others, 
they may be simulated for purposes of political 
agitation. 

The Colonies think that Asiatic competition is 
driving out white men. They are as much entitled 
to their own opinion on this point as labour in Eng- 
land is entitled to the opinion that Chinese competi- 
tion drives out white labour in the mines of the 
Transvaal. They are determined to keep their coun- 
try as far as possible a white man's country, and 

298 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

they have as good a right to do it as AustraHa. 
They have an object lesson in Natal, close at hand, 
where the Indians are already to the Europeans as 
13 is to 10. It will be impossible to keep the Col- 
onies if the Home Government endeavours to force 
them to become a field for Asiatic labour. The In- 
dian question in South Africa is by no means only 
a coolie question, for Indians compete with European 
traders with great success wherever they penetrate, 
and work harder for less profit. 

In Canada a similar problem presents itself for set- 
tlement. Chinese immigrants have been subjected 
to a poll-tax which now amounts to not less than 
£100 per head, but numbers which at first fell off 
are now rising again, the scarcity rate of wages being 
so attractive that the immigrants can pay the crush- 
ing fine imposed upon them, and the need for them 
being so great that they can always obtain employ- 
ment. 

There are in Canada around about 15,000 Japanese 
who are considered as serious a menace as the Chinese, 
and keener competitors with the working man. That 
is to say that their wants are fewer, and that they 
are content with less. The two classes, those who 
realise the advantages to white labour of Asiatic 
immigration, and those who are unable to see, or 
deny, that any such advantages result, are both 
represented in British Columbia, whither immigrants 
come from China, Japan, and India. The Western 
Federation of Miners of the United States controls 
the situation, and it is opposed not only to coloured 

299 



INDIA 

but also to white immigration labour being paid at 
present at scarcity wages. Strong objection is taken 
to the immigration organised by the Salvation Army, 
and to the arrival of Indians, both of which classes of 
British subject are quite as unwelcome as the Chinese 
and Japanese. 

Here is a serious situation like that which has 
arisen in the Transvaal, and it is impossible for the 
British Government to impose free trade principles 
in respect of labour upon self-governing colonies, 
which, in fact, it does not, never will, and never 
should itself enforce. 

The strongest Free Traders are avowedly, or other- 
wise, protectionists as regards labour questions. It 
seems to me that it is far better to take up openly 
the position, as I would, that British labour should 
have open, acknowledged, and undisguised prefer- 
ence over foreign labour, that it should be assisted 
in every legitimate manner, but that no steps should 
be taken in obedience to a blind outcry, which pro- 
ceeds from a want of appreciation of the true con- 
ditions of the problem, and probably tends to run 
counter to the true interests of white labour. Take 
for instance merchant shipping, in connection with 
which objections are raised to the use of Lascar 
labour. It is obvious to anyone who has travelled 
by our ships to the East that their help is an abso- 
lute necessity in tropical waters. Without it our 
Eastern trade would dwindle to small dimensions 
or disappear; first of all, because the shipping com- 
panies could not without it pay a dividend; secondly, 

300 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

because white labour could not stoke in the Red Sea, 
or perform many functions which come naturally to 
the coloured man. 

Immediate objection might be taken to this argu- 
ment, of course, and anyone might point out that 
the case is given away when it is admitted that the 
companies would not pay so well if the labour em- 
ployed were white. But the real fact is that all-white 
labour could not be got, and if it could be got it 
could not be paid, and the only result of abolishing 
Lascar labour would be to destroy a great and flour- 
ishing trade, which now employs immense numbers 
of white men as supervisors and inspectors, by what- 
ever nautical titles known, of coloured seamen. 

Few courses are more likely to prejudice the cause 
of labour in India than the action of the Congress 
party, which is actively engaged in disparaging Brit- 
ish goods throughout India, and it is now asserted 
by their agents that there is very little cotton in 
Manchester goods, which, they say, are loaded with 
china clay, starch, magnesium, and zinc. 

Under the true Svadeshi policy, which Lord Minto 
enunciated, there would be a great future for India, 
not only for its textile industries, but for work in 
gold, silver, iron, copper, brass, and wood; in pottery, 
dyeing, tanning, and leather work; in cane and bam- 
boo; in turning, carving, and embroidery; in sugar 
refining, tobacco curing, and in oil and flour mills. 
The raw material for many of these industries is at 
present exported to foreign countries, whence the 
manufactured product is now returned to India, 

301 



INDIA 

where an abundant supply of cheap fuel and cheap 
labour is alike available. It is not likely, for instance, 
that India will export oil seed permanently to the 
value of £106,000,000 and import oil to the value of 
£22,000,000. 

Again, she grows cotton enough for her own con- 
sumption, and exports the greater part thereof, and 
half of her imports are Lancashire cotton manufac- 
tures. She is one of the greatest sugar producers in 
the world, but she imports sugar to the value of 
nearly £5,000,000 sterling. There can be no doubt 
that the countervailing excise levied on cotton fabrics 
and yarns produced in Indian mills of a lower count 
than twenties, in order to prevent the import-duty 
acting as a bounty in favour of the Indian manu- 
factures as against those of Lancashire, is regarded 
as a grievance. This is not unnatural, and it is 
probable that there are others who, like myself, 
voted for the countervailing excise in the belief that 
it was a necessary consequence of India's connection 
with England, and of the free trade policy of the 
Empire, and not because it was in itself required in 
the separate and exclusive interests of India, so far, 
that is, as such can subsist. 

It must be admitted that while India is, and it 
may be hoped will remain, completely independent 
in respect of her finances, she is, though internally 
independent as regards her economic policy, subject 
as regards all matters by which other parts of the 
British Empire or foreign countries are affected, to 
the necessity of adopting the principles Imperial 

302 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

Parliament prescribes as affecting all dependencies 
of the Crown, and it must not be forgotten that the 
countervailing duty does not affect the still extensive 
hand-weaving industry. 

The Indians are cunning workers in wood and 
ivory, capital carpenters and good blacksmiths, and 
as shoemakers they might with education eventually 
approach the Chinese standard. As weavers they 
are unsurpassed, probably unequalled, in the world. 
Gold, coal, manganese, lead, copper, and other min- 
erals abound in the bowels of the earth: diamonds 
and other precious stones are found upon its surface: 
the forests are full of rare and valuable products, 
over and above timber, out of which anything can 
be manufactured from a ship to a match-box. Skins 
and tanning materials are equally plentiful; along- 
side cotton and jute grow dyeing materials; the best 
of carpets are made by the most ordinary prisoner 
in gaol; fibres are positively a drug in the market. 
At present, Germans and Japanese supply, at suJ05- 
ciently low prices for their clients, furniture, fans, 
ropes, mats, carpets, baskets, buttons, and a hun- 
dred other things, which could be equally well made 
in the country, not to mention the supply from 
England of cotton goods, hardware, and other im- 
portant products. If the proposed University of 
Research will favour the establishment of new indus- 
tries, Mr. Tata should be admitted at once to the 
Hindoo Pantheon, without going through the early 
stages of deification described by Sir Alfred Lyall. 

It is in textile industries that India will best be 

303 



INDIA 

able to compete with European and other Asiatic 
countries, and it is not surprising that she regards 
with suspicion efforts to introduce into her mills 
labour regulations calculated to limit the output, but 
not to raise wages, nor to render the wage-earners 
more comfortable and contented, for according to 
their own standards they have at present little of 
which to complain. A working day of thirteen hours 
does not in India by any means signify thirteen 
hours work. But a short statutory day does mean 
hard unremitting labour without those intervals for 
eating and gossiping, smoking, and washing, that 
go-as-you-please atmosphere which is so grateful to 
the Oriental mind. 

A committee which recently considered textile 
factories' labour in India has made various sugges- 
tions which should be accepted with some reserve 
and not without modifications. For instance, im- 
proving the homes and home surroundings of the 
mill hands is a matter outside the conditions under 
which they work in the factories, and interference 
will assuredly be resented. Any attempt to secure 
uniformity in the administration of the Factory Act 
may be fraught with great inconvenience, and even 
great injustice, for since climatic conditions are by 
no means constant in a great continent, uniformity 
is not to be desired, nor, without hardship, to be 
secured. Rigid insistence upon certificates of age 
and physical fitness are likely to lead to hardship to 
individuals, if not to abuse. The conversion of the 
factories into schools is not likely to prove accept- 

304 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

able to those chiefly interested. Interference with 
women and children is likely to prejudice, without 
materially assisting, those whom it is intended to 
advantage. Insistence upon regular hours at which 
work is to commence and to cease is bound to pro- 
duce inequality, not uniformity, in view of the dif- 
ferent conditions to which it is sought to apply 
this rigid rule, summer and winter, in hot, cold, and 
rainy weather. There are parts of India in which 
the inhabitants do not and cannot come out at 5.30 
A.M. without catching colds, chills, and catarrh. 

Indeed, the mill hands of Bombay have already 
held a meeting in order to protest against the limi- 
tation of the hours of labour, on the ground that they 
would lose the chance of earning overtime wages, 
and so adding to their incomes. 

Up till now little interference has been attempted 
with mines in India, greatly to the profit of the 
industries concerned. For instance, the Mysore gold 
fields have produced £20,000,000 sterling of the 
precious metal, and are still enjoying great pros- 
perity. They are one of the chief features of the 
economic prosperity of the Mysore state, and are 
due to the enterprise of British capitalists, of whom 
the late Sir Charles Tennant was the chief. It 
would be difiicult to find in any country a more 
pleasing spectacle than is afforded here of long 
streets of admirable cottages, clubs, churches, hos- 
pitals, bungalows, well-kept roads, electrically lighted 
streets, and gardens. The water supply, too, is 
excellent, and the high standards maintained in the 

305 



INDIA 

field make it a model labour settlement of great 
value as a pattern and exemplar, over and above 
the large pecuniary profit which from this industry- 
accrues to the people of the Mysore state and of 
neighbouring British districts. 

The miners are satisfied with the wages they 
receive, which are, of course, far higher than those 
earned in agriculture, which is the other chief occu- 
pation of the plateau, and the wages of which have, 
perhaps, hardly doubled in the last generation, as 
they have no doubt in other parts of India. 

Of the Indian agricultural labourers it may be 
said that, under existing circumstances, they do 
not suffer from want unless crops fail and prices 
rise, when they would probably perish in large num- 
bers but for the system of relief and famine preven- 
tion which now approaches nearer to perfection than 
is given to most human institutions. Indian agri- 
culture has rightly been described as a perfect picture 
of careful cultivation combined with hard labour, 
knowledge, and fertility of resource. Dubois, early 
in last century, calculated that the agricultural 
labourer got l^s. a year and his keep. I estimated 
in 1890 that such an one in South India made £3, 
10s. a year in all, without of course counting the 
family gains, and the estimate lately made by the 
Government of India gives a family £8 a year, for 
the wife and children are also breadwinners. To 
suppose that Government can raise the condition 
of the depressed classes was, in the opinion of Abbe 
Dubois, an idle dream, and Mr. Crooke at the end 

306 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

of the last century came to much the same conclu- 
sion. Mr. Justice Ranade pointed out to his fellow- 
countrymen the encouraging increase in the exports 
of manufactured goods in recent years, than which 
the rise in the export of raw produce had been rela- 
tively less, and he attributed the change to the influx 
of British capital and enterprise, and saw a hopeful 
sign in the already altered relations between Indian 
exports and imports of raw and manufactured goods. 
He was a wise man and a real patriot, and there is 
indeed hardly any limit to the development which 
might occur in this respect in a country in which 
vast stores of raw material exist alongside the cheap- 
est and by no means the least efficient labour in the 
world. 

Mr. Crooke, writing in 1888, said that a hired 
labourer in upper India got 3 rupees (45.) a month, 
part of which was paid in kind at village rates, and 
that the wages of blacksmiths and carpenters had 
doubled within the last generation. There is little 
doubt that the conditions of artisan life in India are 
more pleasant and more healthful than those of a 
mechanic in an English town, for the workers' houses 
are more airy and there is less confinement, less 
grinding hard work. They do not produce so much 
because the division of labour, universal in Europe, 
is well-nigh impossible in the industrial organisation 
which obtains in India. If the labour of the arti- 
san was aggregated, its volume would make the use 
of power possible and remunerative, but this is not 
the case, nor, until communication and distributing 

307 



INDIA 

agencies become more assimilated to those obtain- 
ing in Europe, is such development likely to be 
experienced. 

It is difficult for the English student to realise 
that the majority of the Indian labouring classes 
are not dependent upon the rate of wages, because 
they work upon their own account. In comparing 
wages, moreover, in India and England, that of the 
English farm-labourer is always over-stated, and the 
fact that he has, and the Indian farm-labourer has 
not, to pay rent is suppressed. Generally speaking, 
too, the Indian average income per head is treated 
as if it were the income per family, to obtain which it 
must be multiplied by five. A coolie on an Indian 
railway, for example, will get probably Sd. a day 
himself, while his wife and family will earn %d., and 
a penny a day is more than enough to maintain 
each individual member of the average family of 
five persons. The coolie pays nothing for rent and 
fuel, very little for boots and clothes, and his penny 
for the food he wants goes at least as far as \s. a 
day for the British workman's tea, bacon, meat, 
bread, etc. 

Mr. Morison, the distinguished educationalist, 
who was Principal of the Mohammedan Anglo- 
Oriental College at Aligarh and is now a member of 
the Secretary of State's Council, has pointed out 
how different is the type of industrial organisation 
in India from that assumed to be the normal type in 
Western Europe and the United States. In India 
the labourer usually works on his own account, and 

308 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

in addition to supplying the labour necessary for 
the production of wealth undertakes the risks of 
production, while in Europe he is usually a hired 
man working for an employer. 

Mr. Morison in his Industrial Organisation of an 
Indian province has also shown that though in Indian 
towns there are some labourers who occupy the same 
position as wage-earners in Europe, the urban popu- 
lation is only a small fraction, and the great bulk of 
the labouring classes are men who work on their own 
account, and not for an employer. The output of 
wealth cannot therefore compare with that of coun- 
tries in w^hich industry is directed by technical skill, 
commercial knowledge, administrative ability, and 
ample capital, in addition to which the organisation 
of Indian society does not admit of the all-important 
division of labour. Authentic statistics, however, 
show that the indebtedness of Indian peasants is 
certainly not greater, and is probably smaller, than 
that of Europeans in the same position, and that 
both borrow not according to their need, but accord- 
ing to their capacity. 

Except under the most intolerable pressure, writes 
a Congress journal. United India, no indigent weaver 
or mason or petty hawker will resort to another 
occupation, but will stick to his own till actual star- 
vation drives him to the labour market. 

As Mr. Morison says, this difference invalidates 
the application to India of most of the current 
economic doctrines about the working-classes. In 
the normal Indian province more than half the pop- 

309 



INDIA 

ulation are small farmers, whose crops are needed 
first of all to feed the family, and afterwards to pro- 
vide, from the proceeds of the sale of the remainder, 
the funds needed for rent and other purposes, such 
as interest on debt, which, unfortunately, forms a 
very frequent feature in the budget of the petty 
farmer in most countries. 

Exaction of high interest by money-lenders, and 
hopeless indebtedness on the part of the borrowing 
agriculturist, are by no means features peculiar to 
India. They are, indeed, common to agricultural 
life in every country. Credit, as Sir F. Nicholson 
says, is an essential factor of agriculture, and neither 
the condition of the country nor anything else affects 
the one great fact that agriculturists must borrow. 

The immobility of labour is another factor in the 
case. In other countries it migrates to places where 
employment offers, but in India only where special 
inducements are given, as, for example, in Assam, 
Mysore, or in Ceylon or other colonies. Rules and 
regulations too often impede such disposition as 
there is to move, and coolies are often protected to 
their own disadvantage. This is conspicuously the 
case in Bengal, emigration from which to Assam is 
so beneficial to both provinces. 

It is therefore clear that, with their industrial 
organisation, the people of India can never compare 
in wealth with nations in which wage-earners work 
under the direction of employers, and receive in 
addition their share of profit, instead of taking the 
risks of production on their own unaided individual 

310 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

shoulders. In India that system is universal which 
in other countries only obtains in respect of agricul- 
ture, and where land is owned or rented in small 
holdings, whereas in India the carpenter, potter, and 
blacksmith, and other village artisans, are all small 
capitalists without capital, if the expression be 
allowed, whose labour is, to a great extent, wasted 
for want of organisation. 

To compare the conditions of life, the income and 
needs of the Indian peasantry with those of similar 
classes in Eastern and Western Europe is a useless 
and, indeed, an impossible task. Upon the whole, 
the Indian peasant, in ordinary years, is not in a 
much inferior position — when his wants and his 
means of supplying them are taken into considera- 
tion — to the peasant of Europe. The contrast 
is in wants. The peasant in Eastern Europe has 
fewer wants than the peasant of Western Europe, 
but considerably more than the Indian peasant; in 
fact, proximity to the tropics determines not a lower 
standard of comfort, but a simpler standard of 
wants. The Indian peasant can feed and keep him- 
self in good health, with grain and a few condiments, 
for a penny a day; he usually has free quarters, or 
accommodation at an almost nominal rental, and 
his expenses for clothes are but small. The British 
working man, on the other hand, has to pay from 
25 per cent, to 40 per cent, of his earnings in rent, 
and his expenses for food and clothing are, of course, 
very considerable. 

It is extremely difficult to teach the Indian peasant 

311 



INDIA 

thrift. Under former rulers he had avowedly been 
allowed but enough for bare subsistence, and any 
margin our lower land-tax leaves him serves but to 
enhance his credit with the money-lenders, and so 
contribute to his indebtedness. When the peasant 
grasps the idea of putting a penny by for a rainless 
day a great advance will have been made; but the 
habit of centuries has not as yet been weakened. 
The question as to the improvement of the peasant's 
condition is one that can hardly be decided by sta- 
tistics. Doubtless his nominal income has increased, 
but owing to payments in cash — instead of in grain 
as formerly — and higher prices, he is probably not 
so very much better off than before, except where 
he has profited by the local expenditure of British 
capital, and the establishment of some new, or the 
development of some old, industry. 

In considering Indian economic questions it must, 
moreover, never be forgotten that tranquillity and 
comfort rather than the accumulation of wealth, or 
the acquisition of higher wages, are the objects of 
the Indian, and that agriculturists will not be at- 
tracted wholesale to factories by the offer of higher 
wages; which indeed are perhaps not higher when 
the addition of house rent and the greater cost of 
living in towns are taken into account. 

Nor must the fact be overlooked that it is by 
helping cottage industries that industrial develop- 
ment can be best effected, and its range most widely 
extended, for the village artisans are as the sands 
of the sea compared with the numbers provided 

312 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

with employment. That remarkably able and rad- 
ically minded ruler, the Gaekwar of Baroda, dwelt 
upon this fact at the East Indian Industrial Con- 
ference. 

But if the economic development of India depends, 
as it does, upon the provision of the necessary capi- 
tal, what are the prospects in this behalf.? British 
capital is still shy, and the agitators, by increasing the 
indisposition of Europeans to invest in India, have 
done her the worst turn within their power. South 
America, with its somewhat unstable republics, is 
still a far more attractive field. Probably as other 
countries require less capital more will come to India, 
but it is difficult to overestimate the set-back occa- 
sioned by the present unrest. Commercial confidence 
is a plant of exceptionally slow growth, and no sooner 
are we rid of the unstable rupee, and assured of a 
fixed gold standard, than we are threatened with 
instability of another character. Though firm and 
wise treatment has averted the threatened crisis, 
the effects of it will not so quickly pass away. The 
creation of the department of commerce and indus- 
try should serve to define and develop the economic 
policy of the Government of India, but the great 
need is to coax Indian capital, of which it has been 
estimated that there are no less than £500,000,- 
000 sterling, into Indian industries. If the Congress 
agitators, instead of complaining about the drain 
of interest on borrowed capital, would bring indig- 
enous hoards to light, and induce their owners to 
invest them in the country, they would do some 

313 



INDIA 

service in their day and generation. As it is, they 
actually lament that British capital has come into 
India to develop the country, co create her trade, to 
cover her with a network of railways and communica- 
tions, and to endow her with great works of irrigation. 
It is difficult to define briefly the economic policy of 
the Government of India, but Lord Minto has clearly 
stated that the development of home industries in 
preference to importation from without, of anything 
that can be produced within, the limits of the Empire, 
is one of its cardinal features, and the Government of 
India has insisted during the preferential tariffs con- 
troversy that there shall not be imposed upon it any 
system unfavourable to the interests of India and 
repugnant to the decision at which it then arrived, 
the details of which are contained in a blue book on 
Preferential Tariffs, published in 1904. Of Indian 
exports, foreign countries take more than 60 while 
the British Empire takes under 40 per cent., so that 
in the event of a tariff war foreign countries might 
refuse to take India's exports, while she would be 
unable to act as her interests might in that case 
require, owing to the fiscal policy of England. Of 
her imports, on the other hand, foreign countries 
supply 25 and the British Empire 75 per cent. 
India, therefore, has little by way of preference to 
offer, and has very little profit to make from an Im- 
perial interpreferential policy. There are, of course, 
those who hold different views, and the question is 
not one to be discussed in these pages, but it seems 
of little practical value to conjecture what would be 

314 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

the wisest course for India to pursue were her cir- 
cumstances different from what they actually are. 

There is little proof to be found in any direction 
of willingness to sacrifice Indian to British interests. 
The tea industry has been protected by the Tea Cess 
Act and indigo by a special grant; efforts at least 
have been made to improve the somewhat inadequate 
banking system; the customs service has not long 
since been reformed; cable rates have been reduced, 
and, as has been stated above, a department of 
Commerce and Industry has been created. In no 
direction is any sign forthcoming of selfish exploita- 
tion, in all quarters is evidence seen of increasing 
prosperity. The Hindu Patriot lately admitted that 
the day labourer who used to get one now gets two 
pence a day, and wages generally have increased by 
50 per cent, upon the figures of last generation, while 
the standards of living among the poor have improved 
to an extent visible to all whose eyes are not blinded 
by prejudice and hostility. Since the new currency 
policy was brought into play in 1893, up to 1905 the 
expenditure on railways and irrigation has increased 
by 5Q and the capital invested by joint-stock com- 
panies by 23 per cent.; savings bank deposits have 
risen by 43 and private deposits in joint-stock banks 
by 130 per cent.; deposits in exchange banks by 95 
per cent.; the income assessable to income-tax has 
risen by 29, the rupee circulation by 27, and the 
note circulation by 68 per cent., and imports have 
gone up 35 and exports 48 per cent. — figures which 
show that the economic policy of the Government 

315 



INDIA 

may, in some respects, be satisfactorily defined by 
its actual results. 

Nor, when pessimistic descriptions are manufac- 
tured and circulated wholesale, is it unworthy of note 
that United India, a Congress organ, in a series of 
articles on the Indian agricultural labourer, reveals 
the unwillingness of the land-owner to raise his 
labourer's wages in due proportion to the rise in the 
prices of produce, because the average rate of profit 
on money invested in land is only 6 per cent. 

"For a person who invests his money in land 
in this country, the average rate of profit is only 
about 6 per cent. It is not therefore equitable 
to expect him to raise the rate of wages of his 
labourers." 

How fortunate would the English landholder 
think himself in the same case and how willingly 
would he raise the wages he pays. 

It may be roundly stated that the Government of 
India pursues a Svadeshi policy — that is to say, a 
policy of encouraging local industries and manufac- 
tures, and as far back as 1883 local governments 
were instructed to supply their wants in the local 
market of articles of bona fide local manufacture. 
The Government of India expressed its desire to 
give the utmost encouragement to every effort to 
substitute for articles now obtained from Europe, 
articles of indigenous origin, and, except where a 
material difference in price and quality existed, to 
give the preference to Indian manufactures. It 
went further and reminded all its officers that many 

316 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

articles which may not be immediately obtainable 
in the local markets can be made in the event of 
Government encouraging their manufacture. Lord 
Minto has accepted and emphasised this principle, 
and during his term of office, and while Bengali 
agitators have set on foot a sham Svadeshi move- 
ment, intended to further their own objects, and 
to injure their adversaries, he has in several di- 
rections developed and extended the true Svadeshi 
policy. 

It is not contended that British rule is perfect, and 
there are, of course, directions in which improvements 
are required. One such relates to railway rates, with 
which the export trade is, of course, intimately con- 
nected, and during the last two years strenuous 
efforts have been made to bring them into fair rela- 
tions with commercial interests, to increase the roll- 
ing-stock, and to give greater play to technical and 
trading rather than to official considerations. Mr. 
Morley has also appointed a Special Committee to 
inquire into railway finance, to report whether larger 
sums should be spent, and to suggest improvements 
in the administration. The Indian Government, 
which owns the whole or part of almost all the lines, 
occupies a very strong position, and if such a step 
were deemed advisable could follow the example of the 
German Government and control sea freights, and in- 
fluence the course of trade to an extent which would 
probably be found incompatible with the accepted 
English policy in regard to such questions. An era of 
greater activity and better management has set in, and 

317 



INDIA 

there is no room for the complaint, formerly made, 
that railway direction was a close official preserve. 

Another much-needed reform, but one hardly 
within the power of Government to effect, is the 
substitution of coal for other kinds of fuel. The 
chief domestic fuel of the people is dried cowdung, 
the use of which for this purpose robs the fields of 
their natural manure. As land comes under cultiva- 
tion, which previously was scrub or forest — one of 
the chief reasons,* of course, for the increase in the 
land revenue, which malevolence ascribes to the 
greed of the Government, — fuel gets more and more 
rare, and cowdung is more and more in request. 
The provision of cheap coal, therefore, is one of the 
greatest wants of India, and the matter concerns 
the agricultural as much as the industrial worker. 
There is plenty of coal in Bengal and in other parts 
of the continent of India, and cheap carriage by rail 
is the problem to be solved, and Mr. Morley's Com- 
mission will no doubt go as near to solving it as is 
possible in existing circumstances. Meanwhile it 
has been calculated that Indian rates are relatively 
from 40 to 60 per cent, higher than those obtaining 
in the United Kingdom. Diversity of occupation 
and removal of as many of the people as possible 
from the practice of an often starveling agriculture, 
being one of the chief objects in view, the provision 
of cheap railway carriage is one of the chief ends to 
be secured. The Times has suggested that if the 
railways cannot afford sufficient reduction the Gov- 
ernment should compensate them for loss, but that 

318 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

nothing should retard the introduction of this vital 
reform, and as so many of the lines belong wholly 
or in part to the Government, it should be possible 
to deal satisfactorily with the question. 

The problem is how to apply the vast amount of 
labour available in a manner which will give a decent 
livelihood to those living by it, and will develop the 
extensive resources of the country; how to train the 
millions; how best to employ them; how to establish 
the larger industries involving an extensive use of 
machinery, for on such must the industrial future of 
India depend, and how to subsidise the not less 
important cottage manufactures. There are about 
200,000,000 to treat, and if the whole country were 
fed by Indian mills only 1,000,000 of the 11,000,000 
of the weaving class could find employment. Rail- 
ways, jute and cotton mills, tea gardens, and coal 
and gold mines now employ about IJ millions. The 
Indians are at heart agriculturists, new employments 
can only divert a fraction from their traditional oc- 
cupation, and Indian industries to succeed on a suf- 
ficient scale must still be chiefly rural, a fact which 
makes the provision of industrial and technical edu- 
cation an even more difficult problem in India than 
in other countries. If the Government can stimu- 
late the small industries in the hands of guilds 
constituted on a caste basis, it will go a long way 
towards solving a large problem, and only in some 
such direction can light be seen. 

The abstention of Government from any unwel- 
come interference with the labour system, which 

319 



INDIA 

must develop on lines familiar to, and consonant 
with, the traditions, feelings, and even prejudices 
of the people, are of paramount importance. The 
admirable organisation which exists for dealing with 
famine is based, as far as the management of the 
camps is concerned, on the family system. But 
legislation in regard to mining regulates, and inter- 
feres with, the employment of the men and of women 
and children in coal mines. The men cannot leave 
their fields and cut coal unless their women can 
bring their dinners, and the women cannot bring the 
dinners unless they may also bring the children. 
Nor does the slightest danger result, nor have acci- 
dents been frequent when they have been allowed 
to manage matters in their own fashion. Moreover, 
Indian coal and gold do not compete with British 
industries. Recent legislation regarding Assam 
labour too, was regarded, and in my opinion not 
without reason, as needlessly harassing to the planter, 
for, if the coolie can be trusted to know" when he is 
well off, he is so in Assam, in which backward little 
province he settles wholesale, to its great benefit, as 
soon as his contract term is over. 

Those who, like myself, knew India upwards of 
thirty years ago have seen with their own eyes in 
the present century a higher standard of comfort 
prevailing, better clothes, better houses, brass instead 
of earthen pots, and such-like indications of higher 
incomes and improved circumstances. There is no 
need of royal commissions for such as have read 
what records exist of past times, and can, from 

320 



ECONOMIC POLICY 

personal observation and from actual first-hand 
communication with the peasants, compare with 
that evidence the actual conditions of the pres- 
ent day. 



321 



INDEX 



Afghan War, 24, 108. 
Age of Consent, the, 243, 252. 
Agricultural labourers, 806. 
Agriculture, 4; department of, 105. 
Ajit Singh, arrest of, 200. 
Akbar, 21. 

Albuquerque, Alphonse, 36. 
Alcohol, introduction of, 8. 
Amherst, Lord, 40. 
Amrita Bazaar Patrika, the, 187. 
"Anandamath," 175. 
Ancient India, 3. 
Anglicists and Orientalists, 61. 
Army, discontent in the, 168, 
Army of India, the, 51. 
Arrian, Greek historian, 8, 
Asiatic labour, 297. 
Auckland, Viceroy Lord, 39-40. 
Aiu-angzeb grants a site for traders, 
35. 

Babar, founder of the Mogul dynasty, 

20. 
Babu, significance of, 65. 
Bande Mataram, 174. 
Banking, 147. 
Bannerji, Mr., 180. 
Bassein, Treaty of, 152. 
Bengal, partition of, 170; size of, 3. 
Bengali, the, 189. 
Bepin Chandra Pal, Mr., 183. 
Blomfield, Mr., murder of, 169. 
Bombay, cession of, 35; size of, 3. 
Boycott, the, 171. 
Brahmin Faith, the, 5. 



British provinces, 3. 
Buddha, rise of, 5-6. 
Budget, the Indian, 138. 
Burma, size of, 3. 

Cabinet, the Indian, 104. 

Canning, Lord, 41. 

Cashmere, size of, 3. 

Caste, influence of, 246-257. 

Causes and remedies of unrest, 217. 

Cavagnari, Sir Louis, 42. 

Child marriages, 263. 

Civil Service, the, 112. 

Clive, Lord, 36. 

Coinage, ancient, 24. 

Commander-in-chief, the, 106. 

Commerce, department of, 106. 

Confucius, 5. 

Congress, the Indian, 223. 

Costume, ancient, 24. 

Cotton, Su- Henry, 232. 

Criminals, 262. 

Currency, 315. 

Ciu^zon, Lord, 42-45, 64. 

Customs duties, 131. 

Dalhottsie, Lord, 40. 
Death, ceremonies at, 261. 
Debt, the national, 135. 
Deccan Herald, the, 194. 
Declaratory Act, the, 114. 
Departments, the Government, 104. 
Dionysius on India, 10. 
Discontent, native, 167. 
Disloyalty, proofs of, 212. 



323 



INDEX 



Dost Mohammed, 39. 

Dufferin, Lord, 42. 

Durand Convention, the, 43. 

Dutch East India Company, the, 

36. 
Dutt, R. C, C.I.E., on Land System, 

69. 

Early History, 3. 

East India Company, the, 35; trans- 
ferred to the Crown, 41. 

Economic policy, 275. 

Education among the Mohammedans, 
63; female, 240. 

Ellenborough, Lord, 40. 

Englishman, the, 187. 

Exchange, 315. 

Exports, 302. 

Fables of Pilpay, the, 14. 
Faith, the Brahmin, 5. 
Family life, 251. 
Famine Code, the, 84. 
Famine Commission, the, 76. 
Famine Relief, cost of, 137. 
Famines, 70-81. 
Fely, Sir F., 90. 
Female education, 240. 
Finance Department, 105. 
Fitzpatrick, Sir D., 107. 
Foreign office, the, 104. 
Fort St. George founded, 35. 
Free trade, 300. 
French, the, in India, 36. 
Frontiers, Indian, 44. 
Fuel in India, 318. 

Gaekwar of Baroda, 31. 
Gaelic American, the, 166. 
Genghis Khan, 10. 
Gold mining, 305. 
Gold Standard, the, 146. 
Government of India, the, 99. 



Governor-General, 103-104. 
Grecian writers on India, 5-6. 

Hardib, Mr. Keir, M.P., 184. 
Hardinge, Lord, 40. 
Hastings, Warren, 37. 
Hind Swarajya, the, 195. 
Hindoo Mirror, the, 191. 
Hindoo Patriot, the, 191. 
Historians of India, early, 6. 
History, the early, 3. 
Holkar of Indore, the, 31. 
Home Government, growth of, 109. 
Home office, the, 105. 
Hunter, Sir William, 223. 
Hyder Ali, 38. 
Hyderabad, size of, 3. 
Hyndman, Mr., 86-290. 

Ilbert, Sir Coubtenay, 100. 

Illiteracy, 4. 

Immigration, 296. 

Imports, 302. 

Improvements, taxation of, 79. 

Indian National Congress, 224. 

Indian parliamentary committee, the, 

162. 
Indian Sociologist, the, 166. 
Industries, 303. 
Industry, department of, 106. 

Jahangir, 27. 

Judicial Administration, 114. 

Justice, 166. 

Kitchener, Lord Commander-in- 
Chief, 49, 59. 

Labour question, the, 293. 
Labourers, agricultural, 306. 
Labourites in India, 188. 
Lahore Observer, the, 192. 
Lajpat Rai, arrest of, 200. 



324 



INDEX 



Land System, the, 68. 
Language, influence of, 247. 
Lawrence, Lord, 41. 
Learning in Lidia, 5. 
Local Government, 107. 

Macaxtlay, Lord, 61. 
MacDonnell, Sir Antony, 95. 
Madras, size of, 3. 
Mahabharata, the, 5; on famines, 

88. 
Mahmud, reign of, 13. 
Mahratta War, the third, 38. 
Mahrattas, the, 33. 
Malguzari tenure, 71. 
Mansion House Funds, 91. 
Manu, the Code of, 99. 
Manucca, Niccolai, history, 18. 
Manufactures, 303. 
Marriage, 258-271; child, 263. 
Mayo, Lord, 42. 

Megasthenes, Greek historian, 7. 
Military, administration, 59; native, 

153. 
Mining, 305. 
Ministry, the, 104. 
Mirror, the, 189. 
Moguls, India under the, 17. 
Mohammedan incxu-sions, 11. 
Mohammedans, attacks on, 181. 
Moncrieff, Sir Colin Scott, 48. 
Moneylenders, 309. 
Monsoon, the, and famines, 93. 
Moral character of natives, 245. 
Morley, Mr. John, 53. 
Moslem Chronicle, the, 192. 
Municipal Government, 119. 

Nana Sahib, 38. 
Naoroji, Mr., 226. 
National debt, the, 135. 
Native discontent, 167; military, 153; 
States, the, 149. 



Nautch girls, 250. 

Newspapers, influence of, 187-189, 

193. 
Nizam, the, of Hyderabad, 216. 
North, Lord, regulating act, 101. 

Opium, revenue from, 129. 

Parsee Chronicle, the, 192. 

Partition, the, 170-208. 

Peasantry, the Lidian, 282-311. 

Pensions, 140. 

Pilpay, the fables of, 14. 

Plassey, battle of, 37. 

Pliny on India, 10. 

Police administration, 125. 

Poor Law, the, 84. 

Population, density of, 4; distribution 

of, 113. 
Poverty in India, 286. 
Punjaubi, the, 195. 

Railway Board, 106. 

Railway system, the, 133. 

Ramayana, the, 5. 

Real India, the, 1. 

Reforms, social, 240. 

Religious beliefs, 256. 

Religious sects, 4. 

Remarriage of widows, 241. 

Remedies for unrest, 218. 

Revenue and Agriculture Department, 

105. 
Revenue, from land, 68. 
Revenues, 126. 
Riots, 203. 
Ripon, Lord, 42. 
Roberts, Field-Marshal, 42. 
Rupee, value of the, 144. 
Russo-Japanese War, influence of, 

202. 

Sadi, the poet, 14-15. 
Satthianadan, Mr., M.A., L.L.D., 245. 



325 



INDEX 



Scholarship in India, 5. 

Sedition, proofs of, 212. 

Self-government, local, 122. 

Sepoy mutiny, the, 41. 

Shah Fehan, reign of, 27. 

Shastras, the, 245. 

Sher Ali, 41. 

Sikhs, fomidation of the, 30. 

Sindhias of Gwalior, 31. 

Sivaji, 28. 

Social Reform, 240. 

Sport in India, 247. 

St. Aldwyn, Lord, 91. 

Stone Age, the, 4. 

"Storia do Moger," the, 18. 

Suttee, 244. 

Svadeshi, 171. 

Svaraj, 171. 

Taj Mahal, building of the, 
Talukdari tenure, the, 71. 
Tamerlane. See Timour. 
Tariff question, the, 314. 
Tartar reign, the, 15. 
Tax collectors, 87. 
Taxation, 126, 276. 
Taylor, Col. Meadows, 263. 
Tenure, land, 71. 



Textile industry, 304. 

Tilak, Mr., 226. 

Timour the Tartar, 10, 16. 

Tippoo Sahib, 38. 

Trade, 35, 292, 302. 

Tribune, the, 190. 

Truth, a Western ideal, 66. 

University, the India Society, 165. 
Unrest in India, 161. 

Vedas, age of the, 4. 
Viceroy instituted, 103. 
Viceroys of India, 41-44, 

Wages in India, 281-306. 
Wedderburn, Sir William, 237. 
Women, influence of, 267. 
Wood, Su: Charles, 62. 
Wood, Sir Evelyn, historian, 41. 
Working classes, the, 309. 

Yakub Khan, 42. 

Young, Sir Mackworth, 107. 

Yugantar, the, 197. 

Zemendari tenure, the, 71. 
Zoroaster, 5. 



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